MarkFord
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Delray Beach, FL– Walking to my office, a woman passes me, going the other way. She is attractive. Tall, lean, and handsome. And I notice that she is dressed attractively too, in a linen skirt and matching jacket.
She pays no attention to me. She is looking ahead, walking with a confident gait, speaking animatedly into her phone. I hear one phrase: “I mean… you can’t wear it all at the same time, can you?”
And that sends me spiraling into that existential despair. No, not despair. More like ennui. No, not ennui. But a pang. A reminder of how much I’m missing.
“I mean… you can’t wear it all at the same time, can you?”
I’m not judging her, as they (imprecisely and insistently) say these days. I’m jealous of her. Truly.
She is living in a world I do not, have not, and never will inhabit. Yet it’s a full world and it seems to me to be in many ways a happier one than mine.
I try to imagine what things in life I loved that much – what material objects gave me such pleasure that such an idea would have occurred to me.
I am a little sad that I have never felt that way: that I wanted to have it all but at the same time.
Of course, that world is entirely open to me. I have only to wish to enter it to become a denizen. Why don’t I?