2006-01-04

Anchorless

I haven’t set foot in this particular Starbucks for some time now. My last reference to it came in a letter my brother sent me not long before his accident. He wrote of how he had reached a stepping-off point in his life; how his world seemed to be falling into place so nicely all around him. He felt powerful and free in a way he could barely describe. Vancouver was a paradise for him. Across the street from the Starbucks he frequented was the beach I see before me now; it featured babes in bikinis (it must’ve been summer), the young and fit playing beach volleyball and sunbathing, it even had David Duchovny who walked across the street and asked my brother for a pen (this was the heyday of the X-Files but my bro played it cool and pretended he didn’t recognize Duchovny, thus depriving Mulder of an otherwise accessible pen but ironically playing up his importance in the letter.)

Being 15 at the time, I idolized the person my brother had become. I wanted his life, his dreams, all the happiness he had for me. I dreamed of going to medical school and moving to Vancouver, living near Kits Beach and depriving locally famous actors of pens. I wanted to feel the power and freedom he had that most adults seemed to essentially lack.

A year later, he was skiing at Whistler when the chairlift he was riding came down. He lived, just barely, but his life changed quite fundamentally. In the 10 years since his accident, he’s done a lot. He married, has a child, is financially quite free, and despite a wheelchair, is remarkably physically able and independent. He’s very happy.

Yesterday, I went over to his house for dinner. He was setting up his new wheelchair and we talked excitedly about what 2006 had in store for us. We each have some ideas and dreams to pursue and the future looks bright.

It’s strange though, the parallels I see between our lives, separated though they are by the 10-year delay in my existence. Obviously, I never became a doctor (I let got of that path in my first year of University) and I don’t ski often, but I do feel quite fortunate that I live where I do, across from this beach and the peace of the ocean, and though I’m by no means rich, I do feel quite free and powerful, and that, in short, I’ve reached a stepping-off point in my life. Not that I live in fear of falling chairlifts or similar freakish catastrophes, or even that my brother would change his past at the expense of his present were it possible (because I know he wouldn’t), but it does feel as though I’m waiting for something to happen. I think we reach points in our lives where great possibilities and potentialities are afforded us, or that, at least, an individual’s confidence reaches a high watermark where but for one’s basic fears and assumptions of limitation, the previously unfathomable becomes achievable.

Today, while walking here, I was struck by the great beauty of this place. The lush greenery of the west coast winter, the beach and the sea, a city where it seems so many unfathomable realities have come into being. How many chances do we get to do what we must? How many times can we put off today in the hope that tomorrow will be more suited to our particular dreams or desires? Can we pursue happiness in the near term at the expense of a future far off?

I do not profess to know the ultimate answers. But I do know that when this feeling comes, like a rolling wave of potential high and wide that races toward a shore, I know that if you can, you get on that and you ride it as far as it will take you, hoping it will never stop, a never ending tide that deposits your despoiled and sun bleached bones on the shore, before turning back once more and sliding into the sea of things undelivered.

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