Nodus Tollens

I saw Eddie and Marjorie here walking through Market Square this afternoon, hand in hand and just beaming happiness. It was easy to approach them and say how lovely it was to see two people smiling away so. They told me it was this very day their 59th wedding anniversary! I wonder what that kind of certainty and continuity of experience feels like?

It made me think of the decisions I've made in my life, how I've ended up where I am. I was never destined to marry young and live out a contented life of domesticity. I've never experienced any kind of certainty. Never had any money in the bank. Never really known what lies around the next corner of life. And I've not minded that. I'm not sure I'm capable of living a fully contented life. I've never known where the plot is taking me but that's been exciting. I've loved living out my adventurous novel of a life, just trusting that things will work out in the end. But for the first time really I've got stuck in a groove, forced to wait before I can turn the next corner. Every aspect is in limbo, suspended between a past which is holding me down and a future which is just out of reach, just going with the flow, being far more reactive than proactive, perhaps because I've lost trust in the scriptwriter. I should be somewhere else at this point in my life. It felt today like I've ended up in the wrong story. 

I was thinking about this on the way home, catching the 10.45pm train (yes, it's been an inordinately long day), and found an email link sitting in my inbox to the latest word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I still can't quite believe how exactly it describes what I've felt today. How is that possible? These words give form to deeply felt but vaguely formed emotions, which suddenly become recognisable when they are given a name in this way. It is quite extraordinary.

So I leave you with nodus tollens

n. the realization that the plot of your life doesn't make sense to you anymore