October is here, and I wonder where the months have gone. Sometimes I question why my mind seems to perpetually exist on a plane removed from time. Every once in a while my head peeks out from its little vessel and notices its relative location in the sea has changed quite a bit, however gradually. This lack of awareness of context, the fuzzy line where I meet the world, has inevitably lead to aimlessness. But, with recent events throwing most of my life up into the air, I am free to let things fall into a new place. I can never stop floating, but maybe I can try steering harder.

Though the fall season has technically arrived, today felt like summer. I walked and felt energized as the world came at me, buzzing with a variance not lately present in the area I've cordoned off for myself. With my shell cracked open just slightly, it seemed natural to have the warmth flow in as the sun hit my eyes. The light pried my heart open, allowing the cast shadows of all I've been avoiding to leave a cool feeling where they sat, bringing my attention to those neglected areas in my life and urging me to clear the blockages. It's a feeling I don't want to let go.

It's time to reassess where I want to be. 

I came upon an appropriate and relevant alignment tonight. Maybe it's because I was unwittingly searching for it that I observed what would otherwise have simply passed by unnoticed. Both are something I've seen in the past, but their food for thought was something I needed to reabsorb today. To be read repeatedly, the two posts linked below reflect a similar sentiment on responsibility, albeit expressed in wildly different ways:

Joan Didion, on self-respect, in vivid meditations from a brilliantly introspective essay: "Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs."

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/21/joan-didion-on-self-respect/ 

And, from the popular blog Hyperbole and a Half, a touching and humorously accurate reflection on fear of responsibility, which illustrates (literally) the same point as Didion's:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

As I ride around on life's track, seemingly grounded, I carefully navigate obstacles and manage any perceived disorder. At a certain point, a realization begins to sink in that my entire life is merely running on a small piece of familiarity that drifts in open space, getting knocked about by equally aimless others clinging to their own individual groundings. Ever more apparent is that no matter how I manipulate my own path, it can never fully be controlled as it struggles against entropy within its own context.

Yet there are moments of sudden calm where, clinging to my reality, a clear line of sight appears into the open window of another floating by, who is also on this journey. We align, if only for a short while. 'I am here; I existed,' we acknowledge to one another.

Even if it's for a moment, that window into another seems to spark the dormant fuse inside us that validates our existence. And then we are thrown our own way again.

And it happens continually.

Welcome to my window.