A Decade Past

Have been thinking a lot lately about this past decade, from where I've come to where I am going.  Ten years ago, when I was 17, I was still using a lot of drugs, still expelled from high school, still doing a lot of self-discovery, and I had just given my son for adoption.  I think my son's birth, the three days we had with him, and his adoption were moments that strengthened me.  They made consider my own mortality and my own ambitions. When I was a kid I had such great dreams of becoming a scientist and sharing my knowledge with the world.  I wanted to go to space, I wanted to learn about life and the cosmos, and I wanted to be a great person.  My adolescence was a change from that ambition.  my adolescence really taught me humility; taught me about who I really was and what it would take for me to excel.  Ten years ago I realized, to quote from Star Trek: First Contact, that I should not "try to be a great man" but rather "just be a man, and let history decide the rest".  I intend to be the best human being I can be, knowing that I will make mistakes and sometimes fall to my own wants, needs, and simple pleasures along my journeys, and accepting that.  These past ten years have taught me so much about what it means to be human, to have to work for something you want, and to feel unsure about the future.  I wonder where these next ten years will take me.  What will I be doing when I'm 37?  I hope, whatever it is that I am doing in ten years from now, that I will be doing something far different than what I'm doing now and exploring and discovering new things about myself and others.