a·​lain

Text from Alain de Botton's work, Heartbreak. To me, the last quote below feels like repotting a plant or upgrading your hotel room - unsettle and resettle, reprioritize and recalibrate.

“We should never compound our grief with the thought that our ex will be uncomplicatedly happy.”

“That there is much wrong with us is, of course, true; but this dark fact invariably sits within a far larger, grimmer and yet strangely consoling truth: that every person has much wrong with them.”

“To forget, we have to impose a new layer of experience on the things we associate with lost love.”

“When we say we miss them what we really mean is that it is a set of good qualities and experiences that we are missing. It is tenderness, conviviality and open-mindedness we love, first and foremost rather than, inherently, the bodily home in which these qualities came to rest. We encountered these things in and with them and so assume that to lose the person is to lose everything linked to them.”

“Paradoxically, it is friendship that often offers us the real route to the pleasures that Romanticism associates with love. That this sounds surprising is only a reflection of how underdeveloped our day-to-day vision of friendship has become. We associate it with a casual acquaintance we see only occasionally to exchange inconsequential banter. But real friendship is something altogether more profound: It is an arena in which two people can get a sense of each other's vulnerabilities, appreciate each other's follies without recrimination, reassure one another as to their value and greet the sorrows and tragedies of existence with wit and warmth.”

hard·​wood

I don't know what I want to do with my future (see travel). For now, the tool at my disposal is a brainstorm, a sort of mood board. So here I am, channeling future me:

I'd like to be making an impact, finding fulfillment in my relationships and my input.

I'd like to teach people, maybe kids, and let them teach me back.

I'd like to put on my coat (and maybe a little hat?) and scurry down the front steps with a smile that brightens the day of passers-by and a purpose that brightens my own.

I want to make use of my skills while acquiring new ones every day.

I want to stop at the market on the way home for some bread and vegetables and cook something savory and citrusy with my partner. I want to wrap my arms around his soft waist from behind while he stirs, singing softly together on a hardwood floor with a pet curled up on the carpet.

I want to be always curious and often incredulous. I want to put up new shelves and repaint the walls and let myself trust and love his opinions, because they are an extension of him, whom I love.

I want to go to museums together and spend half the time in silence, the other half in sneaky laughter.

I want to deal with art and music and numbers and language and people, and I want people to say "they are so thankful for your help!"

I want to live within walking distance of my sweet, smart friends and have game nights.

I want a special savings account so I can buy them a new stove or radiator when theirs breaks down.

I want to be surrounded by people who say things like "You know what would be weird?" and "I just read something about that" and "Ooh yes, let me look it up".

I want to feel liberated from fears of spirituality, to connect with Them in a way that turns my storehouses of love into a floral Mary Poppins purse.

I want to work hard and be kind and stay humble; to zoom out and say thanks and find the next right thing forever.

And I want to hold his hand through it all.

trav·​el

Because I want to have done it. Is that reason enough? Are there better reasons? As I'm conveyed farther from the structured rhythms of academia, I realize that every post-grad decision is less a matter of "the most prudent thing" or even "the next right thing" and more so "the thing you choose to do next."

You may say, "But that doesn't mean anything at all, Ryan." To which I'd reply, "No I know, I like, totally know."

It's useless (though liberating and stemming from a sometimes-nauseating mass of privilege) to be given access to the whole world on a rainbow platter. I rue my lack of strategic thinking skills - how do I think in terms of 3-, 5-, or 10-year plans? Not my coup de maître. For now I'm planning to travel to Europe for a few months. Because I love language and want to learn another. Because I want to live for a while in a house with fewer things. Because I love the practice of establishing a café go-to and seeing the view for the first time. Because life is unspeakably short and fragile and because I wonder if the only thing worse than being handed massive privilege is not using it. Because I want to have done it.