I've come to realize that a part of aging is a winnowing. In youth you explore every beautiful corner of the world, tasting every fruit of creation, savoring every bond with every living soul, filling yourself to full of every feeling from every combination of person, place, and thing.
And as you age, you realize you cannot live every life there is. There is no time to do it all, love them all, care about it all, be every person you could ever mean to be. There is barely enough time and energy just to keep yourself alive and maybe have a hobby and a friend.
Young adulthood is not about "figuring out who you are" like solving a puzzle, like trying on everything until you find the one that feels "right." It's about accumulating possible selves, and winnowing them down as you realize you have to choose only one life to live. One life has room for one career at a time, only so many hobbies, only so many friends, only so many partners, only so many noble causes to support.
A child dreams of reading every book in the library, a young adult accumulates a list of books to read that never ends. As you age, you must accept you will never read every book you know you'd like. You will never visit every place you'd like to go. You will never love every person who made you feel alive. You will never master every hobby that captivated your attention.
You come to "know who you are" because the list of things you are just gets shorter. I would no longer describe myself as "a singer" even though I've had formal operatic voice training. It's been a very long time since I was a "dancer." I'm hardly an "activist" or a "poet" these days. I'm definitely not a "coder" anymore. My hobbies might include the occasional crochet project or home manicure but I don't identify with them as core to who I am. Over time, things wilt and fall away. Not that I don't enjoy singing, or contra dancing, or writing poetry, or attending political rallies, or writing a silly computer script. I just didn't decide to pursue them seriously. I didn't decide they were important enough to me to be worth the time and effort it would take to keep them in my life as core to who I am.
And the same thing happens with relationships, and communities, and aesthetics, and so forth and so forth. You are refined, distilled, and compounded into a denser and stronger version of the things that stick around.
Lately, especially since the TBI, I have felt like I am not as much of a person as I used to be. Like there is less to my definition. Like to be a librarian with a couple hobbies, a blog, and some friends is not Enough. That I am somehow lacking. Many people, perhaps, identify this lacking as the need to fill the empty space with raising children, or leaving one partner to find a new one with whom they can see a new exciting future (or, for some young poly people, to just accumulate even more partners and even more potential futures, never leaving any of them behind).
But I think that this is simply the winnowing effect of aging. What is not there is a bulk of excess futures never taken. I sit here with sore feet from a fulfilling and exhausting job after overcoming a brain injury. Is that not interesting enough? I do not have to be the great hero reincarnated to defeat the lord of darkness. I do not have to be an exhaustive list of interesting interests and bright colors to attract mates.
Some lips, once tasted, will be delicious and yet fleeting. Alas, another branch to trim. A beautiful path I will not take. Some people could be friends, should I pursue it, or simply we will never meet again. There are so many wonderful people in this world, with whom there is a life to live. Alas, the night is late, and I must rest my sore tired feet. Tomorrow is another day again.
