T and Me: Past, Present and Future

Perhaps we'll see a little less of this in 2009.

I T WOULD SEEM as though T and I have spent our lives pursuing vastly different paths. We have long disagreed on how to cultivate a meaningful life (and what even constitutes such a meaningful life to begin with). Since I was able to understand what “values” were, I gathered that our values rarely fell into the same category. While I was devising elaborate career plans in 10th grade to travel the world as a doctor and crusader for the rights of women and children, T was considering throwing a pole-dancing “private party” in the local bowling alley as a way to bypass town anti-strip club laws and to rake in a fortune. I’m not trying to imply that I was Mother Teresa to T’s Larry Flynt—neither plan really panned out the way we envisioned. At least the one thing our projects did have in common was their idealism. We both were and have always been day-dreamers.

I spent my 21st birthday in Barcelona with my best friend, Kate, and I remember sitting next to an older man and his son on the subway train on our way to my makeshift birthday party. We got to talking (or Kate did, since she is the one who speaks Spanish) with the men next to us, and when Kate explained that it was my birthday the man pointed to his son and said, “Ah, Cancerians. They always have their heads in the clouds!” Kate nodded vigorously—as the only person outside of my family who has spent three years living with me, she would know.

Those wide-eyed dreaming Cancerians, T and I are both. We procrastinate whenever possible (and let me assure you, it is always possible); we lose our keys and our passports and our thoughts; we plot out our futures during class with our favorite celebrities cast in the leading role of our lives. Our methods are the same, it’s the goals that are different.

He wanted to go ATV riding on a dirt track in the middle of the Ardeche, and his whining would not be satiated until he spent at least five nights partying (and then some) with fine French ladies.

Yet I have always fixated on those differences. It was two years ago this spring that I even made a vow to never like T again. I was spending a semester in Montpellier, France, when T came to visit for two weeks. I planned trips to vineyards (T always liked booze), and afternoons relaxing by the Mediterranean, but it was not enough. He wanted to go ATV riding on a dirt track somewhere in the middle of the Ardeche, and his whining would not be satiated until he spent at least five nights partying (and then some) with fine French ladies.

At the end of his visit I was exasperated and entirely pissed-off. I bid him goodbye from the driveway of my host parents’ house and spent the following three weeks brooding about his stupid frat-boy mentality and all the wrong-doings he had ever committed in his life. It was a laundry list of annoyances, and reasonable proof, I decided, to never enjoy his company again.

I kept up the act for about a year, rolling my eyes at all T’s suggestions and telling him he knew nothing about music, nothing about books, nothing about European history, nothing about our mom. But then, miraculously, something shifted. Less than one year ago, we started understanding each other. I began to see more of myself in him. T might be hell-bent on becoming famous for redesigning the lawn chair, but I fall asleep envisioning myself behind the table at future book signings. Are our aspirations really that different?

TSP’s astrologer in residence, Sheilaa Hite, understands the numerology of 2009 to mean duality. She predicts 2009 will be a year of “co”s—cooperate, commit, connect, combine. In this coming year, I hope that I will be able to stop knocking on wood every time I tell a friend that I actually like hanging out with T, and start letting relaxing into a natural symbiosis that exists between us (we are both siblings and Cancerians, after all).

Moreover, Ms. Hite writes that in 2009, “the circumstances of life will ask us who we are, what we value and what we’re committed to.” I don’t kid myself that the answers to these questions will be parallel for me and T. But maybe, for the first time in a long time, we’ll have each other in those responses.

Check out Sheilaa Hite’s full 2009 predictions here.

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