Same Mistakes.

Last Thursday I flew back to the US (the flight shenanigans- going and coming- are a different story altogether).  And for the past week I have sat, immersed, with my personal history.

A couple of months ago- actually sometime in the middle of the summer- my parents put my childhood home up for sale.  Not that I can claim such innocent ownership over it, but it was-is- the house in which I more or less grew up.  And in just about a week from today, they will close on it and head onto their next adventure.

And, in order to help them in getting to that next adventure, I decided that it was high time to sort through the 32 years of life that had accumulated there- the 32 years of my stuff that is interspersed and intermingled with theirs.  In the middle of the first morning, I was literally surrounded by myself- as an aside, it's amazing how much stuff one can actually acquire over time.  Little things, signs.  I found the first travel diary I ever seriously wrote (Paris).  I found my first little-girl diary; my first hand written poetry; the treasure trove of letters written back and forth between my college roommate and I when she was in the Peace Corps.

I found the wrenching years of being lost and losing myself- the notes, the photos, the size-in-the-negative jeans (that I still sickly and weirdly want to fit into again).

And especially in those things, I found patterns.  Patterns of mistakes that I have made in the past, and continue to make presently.  And will likely make again, at some point, in the future.  I was astounded by the repetitiveness of how I have maneuvered through this world.  I have done many things, seen many things, traveled many places.  And I came face to face with the evidence of it all-hiding under my bed, in my closet, in the dark recesses of a dresser that has no rhyme or reason to it.  I have hitherto had a full life, no doubt. But I just keep making the same mistakes through all of it.

Some mistakes are bigger than others, some are better than others.  Regardless, I just keep cycling through them.

I suppose there's a lesson in there somewhere.  For now I'm going with "minimalism."