Stranger

One of the interesting things about my experience of the last year is discovering this new person I have become. This is always interesting, but perhaps more so when this happens well into adulthood and comes completely unexpectedly. I thought I knew who I was, what I liked or didn't care for, what values and rules I adhered to, what was important to me, what wasn't.

Life is full of surprises.

How does that happen? How is it possible for your entire world-view and specifically your view of yourself to completely and radically change in a few short months? How can this stranger have emerged, fully formed, like a moth from a cocoon, in such a short time? How is it possible to live all this time and never have seen this person before? I mean really, how does that happen?

I don't think I know myself better than I used to. I don't think it is so much that I discovered something new about myself, I think I actually changed. I want different things than I did before. I act differently. I speak differently. I think differently. I no longer fear some of what I used to, but now fear other, new things.

This opens up many new questions. Who will I be tomorrow? What views and values will I adopt or drop? What will be important to me next year and what will I be thinking? What will I be capable of, or newly incapable of? Will I be yet some other person, yet another stranger I haven't met? I wonder who that person will be.

It will be an interesting year.