Overall I tend to be an emotional guy, but I’m still surprised by my own emotions sometimes. For some reason I feel particularly emotional this week, and it can be triggered by the most unexpected things. For example, I came across a recent picture of an old friend with their child, both looking well, and I cried. It was partly tears of joy and partly tears of sadness. This isn’t someone I ever knew well. It was hard to put a finger on exactly why it touched me, but I tried. I think it somehow connected me to the enormous, terrifying scope of a single life. There’s this towering tree of possibilities each person has before us at birth, the nearly infinite branches intertwining with so many other lives, and yet only a singular hairline path we actually walk through in all that space. Sometimes when I think of the tree I’m exhilarated, but sometimes I’m heartbroken. There’s beauty in it, but sadness too, at all the beauty that is never explored.
Or maybe I’m just on my period. Who knows.