The Tokyo Tower half-occluded by mist in Tamachi, Tokyo.
“Thinking about choosing a partner, there’s the outside and then there’s the inside. When you’re young, I think you care more about what’s outside, even if the inside isn’t as great. The young, they have that leeway and freedom to afford to sacrifice having to suffer the latter for the former.”
“True…”
“And when you get older, your priorities, your cost benefit calculus, they all start to change and you start caring more about what’s inside than what’s outside. You know, you’ve settled down hormonally or what not, you’ve done your thing, and now you start to be okay with sacrificing a bit of the latter in order to get the former.”
“Right.”
“But for us, right now, right here, in the middle? We’re in the thick of it. Tons of pressure, but tons of opportunity. We have a chance to have both, the outside and the inside in balance, not have to settle, not have to sacrifice.”
“Not the most elegantly put but…”
“Look at us right now, standing on this teeny tiny thin median in the middle of the road. Shit zooming by on either side, one side careening away from us - that’s our youth - and the the other barrelling towards us - that’s our future.”
“A bit of a strained metaphor, don’t you think?”
“And we’re here in the thick of it watching the clouds swallow up the Tokyo tower, trying to get the right shot at the right moment and life is just ramming down full speed on both sides of us, we’re trying not to get hit and time is running out. Can’t wait too long or else it will be too late, can’t shoot too early or we’ll miss out on a better shot.”
“…so what you’re saying is…?”
“…at the is moment we’re in the unique position in our lives where, if we choose correctly, we can have it all. We don’t need to settle for ‘good enough.’ We will have the coming decades to compromise, but for now we should do everything in our power to be happy.
We ought not live the remainder of ours lives thinking about all the stories we could have told.”
“…”
“Well, I’m not a poet. But you know what I mean. Now let’s take this photo and get out of here.”