It's not the long walk home that will change this heart but the welcome I receive with the restart.

I was looking through my markings in Richard Holloway's book 'Doubts and Loves' (which, despite what anyone says, I love). A particular phrase I underlined stood out at me;

[...women are increasingly liberated]...to become agents of their own destiny, within the usual limits that define us all.

I love this phrase. In my head it links with the Benjamin Button film quote I love most;

For what it's worth: it's never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.

There are human limits that define the cornerstones of our lives. After that, though, the space is ours to make our own. I suppose it is simplest to look at other plots to work out what to do with our own; this can be inspiring or stifling depending on the circumstances. Then there is the way that everyone tells you it should be done, that has worked for everyone for centuries! There are lots of things that limit what we decide to do. In a sense every decision we make begins to limit, to cut off other paths. This can be terrifying. It was. Until I watched the film "High Fidelity" last year;

I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open...and that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.

There are human limits and there are the limits we put on ourselves. I would guess that these are often the result of things that are not done rather than done. Conversations that never happened, friends that were never made, places that were never visited, emotions that were never felt... the depths of human existence are great, yes? I doubt that they can be fully experienced in a lifetime. That is probably for the best as someone living through the peaks and troughs of this would be both blessed and scarred to an unbearable extent. However, it was Jack London that wrote,

I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it be stifled by dry rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.

I shall use my time.

To realise that you are becoming a sleepy, permanent planet is scary. To find what it is that lights every atom of your being in a magnificent glow and to follow that, to 'have the strength the start all over again', is potentially even more scary. But it is comforting to think that in this lifetime we never completely start all over again. We have our experience of life threaded through us in a way that although we may change, there is never such a thing as completely rebooting yourself.

What is the point of this? There is not a conclusion as such. Only the words from the end of the film "Into the Wild" that haunt me;

Happiness is only real when shared.