Over break­fast, a gen­er­ous gorg­ing of sausage links, over easy, and hashed browns, the real­iza­tion dawns on me that out of the eight peo­ple seated, four of us have worked in the same office.

In fact, three of us had the same job; while Aaron was work­ing as a devel­oper, Pat was brought in to replace Jacques, and I was hired when Pat left. What a small world. That’s how Pat and I met Aaron, how Aaron met Jacques, and it was only on that day, four years later, that Pat was intro­duced to Jacques.

Now we can sit around a break­fast table, fill­ing our­selves with greasy food and caf­feine in prepa­ra­tion for a week­end of gaming.

How long ago those days seem, work­ing in an unmo­ti­vated gov­ern­ment office, dat­ing some­one I thought I wanted to make my wife. I remarked to Pat how funny it was to believe back then that I knew what I wanted in life, and with a smirk, he asked me, “You think you know what you want now?”.

The ques­tion was rhetor­i­cal, of course. Sometimes Pat knows me bet­ter than I know myself. In his way, he was remind­ing me that even now, after all my con­tem­pla­tion and all my con­clu­sions, I still may not have fig­ured that out yet.

Do I really know what I want?

Not really. In my career, my rela­tion­ships, my short-term life I can say that there’s a path I’m mov­ing towards, but I also know that this will most likely change. As I learn and grow, as new goals are met and made, what I want changes too.

And per­haps being sure of this is what I really want.