If Jesus had known me at 29 he'd have told me to chill the fuck out

I stopped in the middle of the gum stained sidewalk, a girl in a flouncy black skirt and gladiator heels swerving, a pale old man in a thick checked coat and newsboy cap steering his two tiny dogs around us.
I looked at my friend and said, "What am I doing working on this boat?"
We both stood and laughed, big deep breathed laughs, took in the surrounding chaos of dogs and girls and taxis and trees compressed into a single city block in the neighborhood where we spent our early twenties stressing and screaming, laughing and walking arm in arm through coat-chilly fall evenings.

Ten years later the concrete is the same but our energy is different.
My verbal expulsion about my work was not in a "I want to quit my job" way or "I'm frustrated with my life" way or even a "cleaning toilets is so beneath me" way.

It was purely an acknowledgment of the future unknown, of the crooked sometimes painful path that has led me to this very moment of tapping away on a computer in the crew mess while the steel hull around me cuts through Long Island Sound, a chart of Nova Scotian waters in the wheelhouse, my eyes itchy with now I can see faraway contacts, my heart full of love, wonder, excitement for the people I have met and will meet, for the everyday adventure that I know not to look for because it will come anyway, that I don't have to "be" anything because trying to define oneself is a useless task.

As my friend so wonderfully pointed out as we sipped coffee in the park as a tiny, brightly painted old woman curiously poured the contents of a two liter bottle into a large plastic tumbler at the next chipped green metal table, ten or five or even more so two years ago I would not have been able to throw that phrase into the universe with the same lightness and joy and abandonment of expectation. It would have been a grasping cry for order, a mid-twenties crisis of where the hell is my life going and why can't I control it? A frustrated yelp about what I thought my life would be "by now," comparing myself to all those other "successful" people and groping for a way to find my path, not acknowledging that every step, barefoot or high heeled, creates what I am looking for.

But now 32, half way into 2010, letting go of (other)numbers, (pressured)professions, (my/your)expectations, letting time tick past and not trying to shove it in my pockets, saving bits and pieces for anxious midnight snacks and as superglue for lost memories, experiencing here and now-
Shooting stars!
Cold salty air on my bare legs!
My eyelids slowly descending and sending me to bed!
-I am happy with who where and what I am.

We continued walking through the village, through streets we used to know. We didn't plan where to go or what to do. We just happened upon experiences, on language, on music and french fries, and then hugged each other goodbye.

And it was all life.
And it was all perfect.
And all chill.