Carefree

May 26th, 2023

The flood of memories was amazingly strong and sudden. Within seconds I was swamped with images and snippets of remembrances and possibly smells and definitely goosebumps. I had to get up and walk for a while trying to come to terms with my reminiscences and clear my head before going back to my desk. All it took was a quick story from my coworker about her friend who lives now in Long Island, NY. I haven’t even registered what the story was about because I stopped listening at the moment I heard words — Long Island.

I haven’t heard those words in a long time. I haven’t thought about this geographical place — or rather specific places there — in a long time. And yet, the second those words were uttered my emotional state changed and I realized that I remember the meaning and importance of those places and by extension of times then and people there with the understanding of the totality of experiences connected to a particular place and particular time in my life — that happens quite often to me as I get older…

I was stupendously carefree then when on the spur of the moment I could just drive up to the north shore of Long Island, mostly to Oyster Bay. Ok, I might have had some worries or things troubling me — but on the whole, my life when I was in my mid-twenties was easy and relaxed and sheltered on such a scale that I have trouble understanding it now when I am in my late forties. I had the ultimate freedom to do whatever I wanted. I wasn’t bound to any internal or external duties or expectations. I was free to enjoy moments without any pangs of consciousness or fears for the future. The innocence of my younger years seems like something from a movie I watched a long time ago as a different person — but I learned recently not to put any judgment on deciding if that was better than my life is now. It was then and it was different. No more than that — no weighing better/worse, just acceptance of the difference then/now. And compensating for the difference by memories is fine by me.