ir #1
I miss home.
Maybe it’s the fact that I helped move the last pieces of junk out of the garage; or maybe it’s the fact that I can wake up at 11am or 8 am without a sense of overwhelming panic; or maybe it’s the fact that I have the liberty to walk around late at night and not worry about getting mugged; or maybe it’s the fact that I get to see old friends from high school who have new experiences to share and old memories to think about.
Or maybe it’s the fact that I get to see my parents and webcam with my grandparents and my aunt and my cousins.
I have this intense, tremendous nostalgia for those 7-year-old experiences: Following my dad around Home Depot holding a Gameboy—playing the first video game (Pokemon!) I would ever lay my hands on; making paper airplanes, running up the stairs, and flying the planes down the stairs; biking laps and laps around the park imagining that I was impressing strangers with the speed of my safety-wheeled bike—it’s strange, but I really don’t miss being 16. I really don’t miss being 13. I really don’t miss being 10.
I really miss being 7. And maybe my childhood memories only take me as far as 7. But I could make mistakes—I could imagine myself to be whomever I wanted to be; and whatever would happen, I would go home lie in my bed, wake up whenever I wanted to wake up and start over.
In fact, the only reason I beat Pokemon Yellow is because I could save the game before entering each of the Elite Four challengers and shut down the game if the battle went badly.
Put my finger on the side of the Gameboy. Nudge down.
Click.
I wish life beyond 7 had saves.
There is an ever increasingly morbid sense of mortality and vulnerability during life beyond 7. You get to go to middle school and high school and learn what you learn and if you’re fortunate find something you love beyond school. But everything you do, everything you gain, everything you know—all those little pieces of memories, and wisdoms and experiences: those wonderfully human and experiences filled with love and sentiment that you can revisit and replay in your head—are shut down.
Click.
Steve Jobs explained to Walter Isaacson that this was the reason he didn’t place power-off buttons on his machines. The click was too much.
And that’s another thing. When I was 7, my parents were invincible. They might be wrong, but they were invincible. I could come home knowing that they were there: complete and standing. Life beyond 7 is filled with moments where you realize that everyone, everyone including the gods incarnate in your parents, is susceptible to the click.
We are all fragile and vulnerable and life beyond 7 is filled with moments that remind us of this ultimate shared humanity. What makes Achilles so beautiful is what makes Homer Simpson so relatable is what makes Jesus of the trinity is what makes war the end-all and be-all of human tragedy. Our humanity is defined by our click. Our humanity is defined by all the small clicks that make up our lives: the gap between our expectations of reality and reality itself. We wait for moments that never come: waiting for the girl, the one, to call you back and tell you how much she cares for you; waiting for everyone to recognize how unique and wonderful you are; waiting for your parents and that house—fresh laundry, cooked food and all—to be there every time you decide to go back, to return.
It’s what we share—those clicks. Not all of us will be drinking champagne while driving a luxury car, or find love and kiss in Times Square, or find sanctity in the bounds of religion, or make decisions that impact the livelihoods of millions: not everyone will get whatever they worship, whatever satisfies their purpose in life.
But we all experience loss. And we all experience the ultimate equalizing notion of humanity: our very fragility. It’s what makes us human—it’s what defines us as beings. Loss define us, empathy unites us.
Click.
Missing home, reminiscing—small reminders that we are ultimately human; we don’t have save files. And that’s okay, that vulnerability. Because without that vulnerability, that fragility, that defining and bonding human characteristic—what else would we have?
