My personal laptop died a quick death two months ago. It's with great gusto that I welcome it back to life after two months in purgatory. The actual procedure of restoring its life took no more than fifteen minutes. The cognitive load on its scatterbrained owner was far more intense.
I felt a sort of symbolism in welcoming my laptop back to life. I can't exactly pinpoint why. It's maybe because for four years, this machine has been so closely tied to my psyche that its absence, though functionally trivial, felt like a part of my mind had been shuttered. If it's true that the tools we use shape us, it's true that the absence of tools shape us as well.
Anyway, on the topic of radical changes, I was recently conversing with a good friend of many years. We were revisiting the topic of high school: how did we remember those years? And she said: “It was a complete teardown of who I was as a person. Like a rebirth."
I felt shivers down my spine and tingling around my stomach as she said this. Excitement and pure anticipation. Some part of me knew — knows — that this present season of my life is a tricky one. Impatience is one of my vices, and I want to exit it as quickly and gracefully as possible. And so the prospect of a panacea in the form of a rebirth appealed to me greatly.
But I suspect that complete teardowns are never that clean and simple in the midst of them. In hindsight, my friend could describe her experience all those years ago as a rebirth. In the eye of the storm, though, she likely went through all the flavours of ennui, anguish, impatience, anger, and self-pity that people frequently put themselves through.
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