I skipped class on Monday. “Why” really doesn’t matter. I did go to work though. Rolling out of an achy bed at 2 in the afternoon, I gathered myself as best I could, and walked over to the Culp to work at the student help desk for a couple of hours, thinking all the way about the last couple of days.
Flashback, Saturday, around 9 p.m.: The Internet is down. I am having fun playing with my very expensive word-processor/ paperweight. I never realized just how crippling a server outage could be.
Being somewhat of a homebody, I have just lost my interactive connection with the outside world. More than a little peeved, I go see Black Hawk Down with a friend, come home, read a little while and go to bed early.
Flashback, Sunday, 10 p.m.: Internet still down. Not even looking at the paperweight. Trying to get my weekly fix of my favorite television show on HBO: Oz. Oz is not on. Janet Jackson is live from Hawaii, taking up my TV time.
Considering how the rest of the day has gone, this does not improve my attitude. I run up and down the channels, hoping to find a suitable replacement. None is found.
Around the time I am considering the possibilities of airborne entertainment equipment, Janet leaves Hawaii and Oz comes on. I watch, and happily “fixed” for the next seven days, I go to bed.
Flashback, Monday: Alarm goes off at 8:30 a.m. I get up, go to my Strength Conditioning class at 9:20 a.m. I haven’t been in two weeks for a lot of reasons. I’ve missed it enough times that the highest grade I can make is a “D.”
I talk to my teacher, and we agree that the best thing to do would be to drop the class and take something else later. He suggests Power Walking, and I actually think about it.
I stroll back to the room, depressed, first stopping to get some OJ and a biscuit, and talk with some friends.
I decide to take a nap before class at 11:30. My alarm goes off. I don’t get up. I decide to lie in bed and try to “figure things out.” Whatever that means. I sleep till 2 p.m., and my alarm goes off.
Present, 2:30: Leave to go to work. While walking to work in the Culp, I notice the concrete of the handicap access ramp that leads up to the post office entrance. I see where three girls have scrawled there names in the then wet concrete, back in ’94 as the etching proclaims. I stop for a second realizing something, and roll quickly into work.
The truth of the past few days begins to fall into place. Nothing has gone my way, life is crashing down and every time I look behind me the avalanche of consequences gets one step closer to my tired heels.
My mind wanders back to the names scrawled in the concrete, the stone. There’s something to that, I feel it.
It’s one of those moments when you realize you’ve learned something, only to truly understand it later, like finally getting a joke someone told at lunch, and, at dinner, you laugh and everyone just looks at you funny.
Then it hits me. Stone. Written in stone. I finally understand. The past few days are like the names etched into the concrete. Not just the past few bad days, but every yesterday, since I began, is carved into an unchanging stone.
The images come quickly now. The present is the moist concrete for us to shape, to write ourselves in, to make a monument to memory and history. All our yesterdays are immutably and eternally written in the stones of what has come to pass.
We are the stones. Every action, every decision, no matter how insignificant, changes the shape, the wording of our monument. It builds as we grow, shaping and turning, becoming, until it is a complete representation of who we are, from what we’ve done.
Perhaps much of what we learn in life is found retracing these roads, these stone paths, chasing the curves of opportunities missed, to discover ourselves in what we have, and in what we lack.
Yet, to truly begin this journey, there is one thing the traveler must accept. Nothing one sees can be changed. It is there and nothing will take it away.
In our journeys we may discover our reasons and excuses, and make peace with our histories, but no amount of absolution can alter the fact of the matter. The only true comfort comes with time and learning; Learning not to make the same mistakes twice.
There is a true moment in maturity, in growing up, the boundary that many have yet to cross. The moment when we have made a decision that we cannot take back, when we have made a mistake that cannot be repaired with a playground apology, or an after school brawl. Regret is a whole new level of understanding.
Perhaps this is why experience is the best teacher: why maturity is a by-product of time and understanding.
It may be that it is not possible to see the picture in the puzzle without a certain number of pieces. And just so we can’t cheat, God has kept the boxes, and only he knows the whole picture.
In life then, the only thing we can expect is a glimpse of ourselves, a hint of a shape, the early outlines of a picture incomplete.
Our past is “written in stone,” just like the names on the handicap access ramp, at once graffiti and history. And the only way to change that is to destroy the stones themselves, and the ramp is too useful to destroy just because of a little graffiti. That is the lesson of life.
Our mistakes are our graffiti, but just as much as they may seem an eyesore, they are also what makes us unique. No one is quite the same. Everyone is different.
Different experiences, different mistakes, never two alike. Our graffiti is our identity.
I suppose what I am trying to say is, the past is in the past. Why we did what we did matters only in so much as it will change what we will do in the future. Beyond that the past is merely a marker, a piece of a map, a puzzle, a work in progress, graffiti on a handicap access ramp.

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