An even older path

I was raised in a way very different from the ways that I have adopted now.  I didn't know how I would exactly react when  I went this weekend to a place that I knew had kept those time-honored ways of the all the restricted forms of discipline I had kept in my very young years.  I anticipated that I would have some nostalgia, and then be appreciative of my current lifestyle and move on.

But my mind couldn't really comprehend what I saw.  It was so far removed from my current ways that I had no nostalgia whatsoever.  I  actually found myself pitying the ones who were still engaging in these retroactive habits.  I felt nothing for myself because I had escaped the slavery of such a lifestyle.

It was dream-like.  I could see what was happening, but could not engage.  I found myself as a spectator only.  At the end of two timeless hours, I was finally able to get in my host's vehicle and leave the scene.  When asked what I thought about the experience, I used the word that normally I use for thoughts that have to be masked.  "It was nice," I said.  But nice and numb have the same feeling to them (really a lack of feeling).

I am writing from a comfortable distance from the scene of that window to the remote past place in my life.  I am only thinking thoughts like that of the old Pink Floyd song.