Around this time of year I become a little bit introspective; I wonder exactly what substance it is I have 28 years of; what possible relationship there could possibly be between what I am now and, say, that creature of 5 years ago who was bicycling along US Route 2 in Havre, Montana. There is probably more than I am perhaps willing to admit: like so many other people I would like to think of myself as a perfectly free and self-determined individual, completely in control of myself. How many times have I packed up and left town, cutting myself off from the ties of friendship and family, as if to prove that I am in fact sui generis.

One thing that has changed over the past year is that I now realize this particular picture of human freedom is a bunch of nonsense (Gnostic, Manichean nonsense at that: it is terribly hard to be unique in one’s heresies). There is simply too much evidence of habits that still persist with me, and of desires that have been growing to fruition over the years (look: in 2002 I was already thinking about birding, with a sort of mocking curiosity). The truth is that I am not free to be just anybody. The world has shaped me. Habits have accreted, and anyone who has eyes for such things will see in my mannerisms, posture, and habits of speech and thought something like a complete history of where I have been, what I have thought about, and what I have valued. Everything leaves its trace.

But this is not to say that I am not free, only that I have a definite nature. It is true that this nature is limited, but it is also malleable. My choices are limited, but they have real meaning. If I lift weights, I’ll become stronger. If I choose to love, I’ll become loving. The matter of my body will arrange itself in a pattern that gives me strength, or the habits of love. Just as some part of my brain rearranged itself when I saw a Clark’s Nutcracker the other day. Now there is something I quite literally carry with me. Last night I dreamed of it, and I remember being surprised that it was in my dreams and not up in the Sierra Nevada where it belongs.

(cdm | ClarksNutcrackerDream )