Big Chunks & Future Plans
In my mid/late teens and early twenties, there was a great deal of excitement and passion in exploring the world. The large white map of human culture and experience was filled in in big chunks, and future plans gave an added sense of magic to the adventure.
Looking back - and even then, I knew that the passion and excitement was right here - in the present, in whatever I was doing. It only appeared to be coming through filling in the large chunks of experiences and information, and through the plans for the future. But there was still an attachment to having large pieces fall into place, and the excitement about the plans.
Later on, when the large pieces became few and far between, and I was actually living many of these plans, there was - and is to some extent, a sense of nostalgia thinking back at that time.
The sense of wonder, passion and excitement so alive then is still available of course. It is inherent in the mind, in existence exploring itself. Only now it comes up in a different context, in apparently more fine-tuned explorations and in the present. There is nothing in the future to place it on. No expectation of large pieces falling into place.
This is a reminder of how experiences come up, such as passion and wonder, how we may attribute them to particular situations, and then become attached to those situations to the point of overlooking the presence of those qualities right now - in a different context.
I also see how I even back then had everything I wanted, although also needed more time to more fully realize that.