versions

I came across this blog post via Lost while perusing another blog fave of mine...and it resonated with me...I often find myself doing this exact thing.  Although, being southern we don't take trains to work unless we are indeed the conductor, engineer or wayward teenager(who is actually going nowhere).  Nonetheless...something to think about...

I have a new route to work now. On an overground train that passes parks and houses and a school, that passes other trains. On which I stand closely to strangers for about eight minutes, never more than 10. Sometimes our hands touch as the train lurches and one of us reaches for something to hold on to. Other times I accidentally make eye contact with the done-up blonde or the two men in suits, at least one of whom must feel choked by his tie, the other choked by expectation, regret, any of life’s other nooses.

Often I imagine what it feels like to be the wives of the men wearing wedding rings, to be the children of the mothers who can talk about nothing but them, to be the done-up blonde with everything so perfect and smooth and I wonder how many people ever get to be the version of themselves they wished they could become. 

And so, I think about what I wanted to be when I grew up...the version I've become.  Though the profession changed many times, the husband part, mother part, child part, I accomplished.  The "everything so perfect and smooth" part mentioned above...not so much.  But then, that's what makes us who we are and makes us strive to be better at the versions of ourselves that we imagined.

image credit: fifty-fifty clown via flickr