On the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return
Amongst my most treasured of feelings, is that of the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return.
Let me explain what I mean. It usually strikes at airports, perhaps train stations. You’ll be looking at the vehicle which is to take you to some place. Not just any place, but a place you haven’t been before, or have visited rarely. Your chest tightens imperceptably, your heart rate rises, just a little. Suddenly, the everyday is no more. No job to worry about. No need to get the same coffee from the same barista. The minutiae of bills and credit cards and dentist visits and kitchen benches that need to be cleaned all evaporate.
At first, you’ll only just glimpse what possibilities the future now holds, like the glint of a fish’s fin under roiled waters. But that glimpse is all you need, a single thread from which you can begin to weave the fabric of a thousand futures (it matters not a whit that only one will come to pass). New places bring new opportunities, and let us think new thoughts.
Our imagination runs free only in the cage we build for it; if we are to leave somewhere for two weeks, we may imagine two week’s worth of new possibilities, and no more, lest we incur a debt we cannot pay. Four weeks vacation earns four weeks of thought.
I’ll not scoff at four weeks new thoughts, for it is many more that some people think in an entire lifetime. But, with a little more commitment, we can knock down the fences of our mind. Quit your job, and end your lease. Say goodbye to your friends. Cast off each and every shackle, tying you to routine.
A return ticket lets us rent the future for some fixed term, but a one-way ticket is its outright purchase. This is the Anticipation of the Uncertain Return, the heady mixture in equal parts of fear and excitement. Of freedom and responsiblity for yourself. Everything is possible, and you, and you alone are to make it happen.
To stand in an airport boarding lounge, and cast a last look over the city you’re leaving.
To board a train to somewhere, not knowing when, or even if, you’ll return to where you left.
To stand on the edge of water of life, suddenly realising its not a backyard swimming pool, but an entire ocean, and to jump in.
A man can only assume his true shape when he is absent of the forces that wish to deform him into something otherwise. Every self-censored word held back in the service of career, every hour spent at gyms in pursuit of images sold to us, deforms us. We may as well be sheet metal in the industrial presses, to be bent this way and that. But I think that humans are made of a more ductile stuff than mere steel; absent those deforming forces, we spring back to our natural shape.
That’s why the Uncertain Return is so special: it is one of the rare acts which completely frees us, and lets us find our proper shape.
