Funerals Happen Every Day When You're Expanding

I watched the movie AWOL last night, and the truth is, it was just an average movie.

But I was fascinated by it.

I was fascinated by it because the movie is set in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I grew up, and everything from the trailer to working at the ice cream stand was the spitting image of a life I once knew so intimately. It was like stepping back in time—the junk yard pick up truck; the boozy men; the sense that the world has left you behind. You know that life, but you can’t imagine it anymore.

I wonder if I knew then, what I know now. That every aspect of life is just a substitute for what’s to come next. That who you are is a mere temporary tattoo, because who you are becoming is constantly erasing and re-writing what’s done. Nothing is ever “done,” in fact. Done is an illusion.

It is at once both thrilling and wretched, this process of evolution. You must lose yourself to find yourself, over and over again. Forward motion is inevitable—that much is certain. Whether or not it’s progress, that’s a different question.

Change is not always growth, but growth will always require change.

Funerals happen every day when you’re expanding.