Mist

I've always believed that there are certain days I feel older. They are not frequent, but they are real. For the first time in my life, such a day has fallen on my birthday. I am 25 today. A quarter of a century lived. A half of a graduate degree finished. A whole life lived daily. An expansive heart, ready for adventure.

For the last three years on my birthday, I have gotten up early to watch the sun rise. In Colorado, it was on top of the chapel, facing Pike's Peak. The sun would come into sight and Colorado would be reborn, washed in light. This morning was much different. I rose at the appropriate hour, walked to the top of the hill behind my house and climbed the tower. From that vantage point, I have spent many nights looking out over the cities of Somerville, Cambridge, and Boston. This morning, though, all were obscured.

A thick mist has settled here. I could see no further than the stoplight by my house clearly and could only make out buildings a block further than that. Even as the sun rose higher, the mist diffused the light, keeping the world a dull gray. At first, I was saddened, wondering if I would even actually get to see the sun rise. I wondered if this is how the future looks right now, blurry and uncertain, obscured by humidity and broken light. Then more mist rolled in. I watched the clouds of moisture press into the rest of the mist. I had thought there were no way for it to become mistier, but it had. In that excess, I began to see the mist not as obstructing my view, but instead as comprising my view.

As I walked home from my sun rise celebration, I remembered that mist was part of what I loved most about Ireland. I loved the way it made the most mundane activities mystical and made belief in faeries not just possible, but requisite. Seeing the mist again through this memory, I glanced once more upon the metaphor for my future. Yes, it's unclear, but not in a despairing way. The sun is rising, infusing water and fire to light up the very air. Life is not hidden, but instead omnipresent. Taking mist as the object of my gaze, I begin to see that the future is not some scary place out there, but instead a time and space as close to me as the curtains of water droplets welcoming me into the second quarter century of my life.