A prelude to Life Through the Looking Glass

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Paul Auster says life is like seasons (Well, Shakespeare said it first but who's counting.) Winter being the last one of all. I thought, how appropriate. Ever since I was in my 20s I was never quite happy with the present (American way of thinking and living), or the past (Confucianism – Chinese way of thinking), I had always focused on the future.

Future is one that you could amend past mistakes and the present discontentment. You can still write a future. What’s really interesting though, is as I got older, my vision of future is no longer the summer, or the fall, it’s the winter. I have been told summer is now (30s – 50), fall is (50 – 70) and winter is (70+). Yet, when I think about the future, I go straight to winter. When I was in my 20s, I wrote about a woman’s summer: white picket fence, Victorian house, two children – one boy and one girl. I wrote about a woman’s yearning for the love that would fail her, and the man who would one day regret the decision he did not make. I don’t know if it’s life imitating art, or if that you can will a future if you try hard enough. I do know that this is not too far from a reality I know so intimately.

So now I begin to imagine the protagonist’s last future, the winter.

I have read so many sad, regret-laden stories about the wintery future. I don’t feel that way about the version of my future.

I see optimism, confidence, and strength. Optimism I never had or current have. And for the very opposite of the present me, I actually believe in love will find its way and love can and will conquer it, once for all.

How interesting then, about this version of me. Present = San Francisco Summer, cold and foggy; Near future = fall, absolutely no idea what that is like and I dare not to think about it. Future future = winter. This version I know. I can see it so clearly. Hand holding hand. Love finds its way. She finally gets to find and keep her true love and spends the remains of her day in happiness and contentment.

I wonder, then, how much of it will be true; and how much of it is me hoping to find some hope, in a world that hope is the only luxury a woman like I, cannot afford.