Electrons make me reflect on atoms

Cryptic title, I know. What I mean is, the things I see on my computer - the electrons - make me reflect on my corporeal being - the atoms. Facebook has really messed with my mind many times. For instance, folks I've not seen in twenty or thirty years from my little hometown are now talking to me on Facebook. I see their pictures and they're not the ones I knew back then. Logically, what would you expect? High school was a long, long time ago.

On the other hand, the realization of the amount of time that's passed smacks me around a bit. High school reunions just wash over you and you get a lot of it out of the way in one "fell swoop." Facebook is a steady diet of, "Oh, man, has it been that long?"

To anyone under thirty-five or forty, this is probably fairly meaningless. It occurred to me that history teachers probably have a hard time because it's not easy to get someone to appreciate other folk's history when you don't have one of your own. When your own is still being written, the ever-lengthening scope of it tends to skew how you record it.

It doesn't stop the melancholy, though, and that's just life. While that's easy to say, the emotions color everything. Being fairly ambitious, my tombstone will not read, "Nice guy, but unmotivated", so I think about my legacy. What example will I leave my children? Probably that of a workaholic but, in many respects, that's a man's world to me.

All that aside, there's still the fact that I'm deep into middle age and the re-connections make me think harder about what being my age really means. Things are more finite now. My life is good, but there's a gravity and a lightness that coincide. I can glimpse the end and the beginning, see all the good that's passed and imagine that which is coming. The age old questions - What have I done with my life? How will I get by when I'm old? Etc. - bear down but, being pretty optimistic, I always assume that I'll bull my way through it all. Still, there's a little nagging doubt and 'round and 'round we go. That's life, though, and it's a far better thing than the alternative.