The Weight of the Years

It was not easy, but then there aren’t that many easy things when you get older. Life is easy when you are young, even though – sometimes – it doesn’t seem like it.

Life is light when you are young; there is a floating freedom where life takes itself off like a kite caught by the wind, only a slender string holding it back.

As you grow older, there are more and more strings: marriage, work, children, all of them tying you to the ground. The kite of your life is heavier too, you know too much about how hitting the ground from height hurts. You no longer want to go high just to see how far up the sky is, you no longer want to be free to let the wind take you where it wants. There is too much down on the ground pulling you down, too much gravity to fly free.

Then there are the times when all those strings that tie you to the ground get entangled, when marriage and a new lover wrap themselves around each other, when the children become knots you can’t untie, when the string of work frays and comes apart, leaving you floating away from the work that tied you to the ground, but also defined you. When the string breaks you are no longer a kite, you become a toy for the winds of chance to play with, to rip you away from everything you’ve ever known, to send you spinning away into the clouds before crashing you to the ground someplace far from everything you’ve ever known.

Sometimes – even though it is never easy – you want to hold tight to those strings and never let go.