“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

“I’m growing older, but not up.”
- Jimmy Buffett

you know how they say (i think) that no one ever notices growing up? that you wake up one day and you’re middle-aged? i have been riding along through life with that mindset, still feeling like a kid, the number “28 years” a foolish placeholder that sounded a lot more significant when i was younger.

except things sort of changed last week. nothing of any enormous impact happened – i had a busy week – but at some point i realized that i was just as smart and capable as every other “adult” i came across. i realized i wasn’t a kid masquerading as responsible; i was responsible, i was competent, i am. my co-workers, friends, relatives – it’s like i just awoke to find myself on the same playing field as all of them. i don’t want to make too much of this, i guess, it’s just more of an interesting placeholder in my brain, that i grew up in january of 2008.

i’m glad i am buried in the west wing during the candidate selection process. why? because i hear stuff like this and it sets my expectations properly:

When the president’s got an embassy surrounded in Haiti, or a keyhole photograph of a heavy water reactor, or any of the 50 life and death matters that walk across his desk every day, I don’t know if he’s thinking about Emmanuel Kant or not, I doubt it – but I am comforted at least in my certainty that he’s doing his best to reach for all of it, and not just the mcnuggets. Is it possible we would be willing to require any less of the person sitting in that chair? – Josh Lyman

our president should be superman, or as close as humanly possible, and nothing less.