Where the days go? I don’t know.

I see my friends and family, and I think they look the same as they always have. Sometimes, though, through an old photograph I realize we do not. I get caught looking at it, and I wonder: Who is that man? Who is that boy?

Perhaps wonder is the proper work for a lifetime.

There are those who seem to have the world figured out at the ripe old age of 20, or 30, or so on. Their rest of experience is spent reinforcing what they think they already know. What a waste of the world and those we share it with, accepting a world and people of illusion in their stead, and offer our lives to their shadow.

We think our relationships are a product of our feelings, rather than our feelings being a product of them. To change the relationship, we strive to change the feeling and push a little harder on the rope.

We think we know what our relationships are supposed to look like, if only the other person would play along. And that somehow that relationship isn’t as important to us as it is to the other: “us ourself in the summer heaven godlike.”

Maybe the biggest illusion is that we’ve figured out who that other is and who we are, never realizing what might be discovered of us both in our relationships. Halls and passageways and great gardens go untouched like gifts unoppened.

It’s not by chance that some of these gifts have the same name as our parents. Sometimes, what we do with it is embarrassing, and sometimes it’s a draw, but sometimes it leaves you in wonder, and a life’s proper work.

Who is that man? Who is that boy?