Yearnings

Sometimes I wish I was born in a different time period. A different set of days into which I would fit better. It's a strange feeling because I am generally happy with my life. But I get into these moods where I wish for something else. Something simpler, more elegant and sumptuous. I wish for the 20s, when everything was so heady quick. I wish for the 50s when elegance mattered and life was simple with just a touch of the dynamic, new world emerging after WWII. Mostly I wish for a life where the decisions I have before me weren't so difficult to make. When it was easy to get a job and make a good life for yourself and the family you hoped to one day have. When everything wasn't a constant struggle and worry. I suppose I time like that has never really existed, except for in the pages of my novels that glamorize the past for readers who never knew it. Still I want to escape the choices I have before me, about what to major in, when and where to intern, how involved in campus life to be. I'm so afraid I'm going to fail. Just flat out fail my life. I'm afraid I'll end up unhappy and alone and poor. I'm afraid I won't make the right choices and that I'll come to regret the things that I have done. I don't want to have any regrets. But how can you know now what decisions you may come to regret in the future? How is it possible to know which opportunities you'll wish you'd took, which ones you'll wish you had passed up? 

I wish I could go to sleep now and wake up at the end of my life, still having all the memories but having skipped the parts where I worried and agonized over what was right and what was good and what was necessary.