I Measure My Life In . . .

So I've been thinking recently. The thinking part, incidentally, is nothing new--but this is the first time I've pondered this topic to such an extent. The topic is how I measure my life. Prufrock first led me to ponder this my freshman year of high school, and any time I revisited his pathetic existence: he admits he has "measured his life in coffee spoons." And not too long ago, I was watching Rent and listening to the variety of things they sing about measuring a year with in "Seasons of Love": daylights, sunsets, midnights, cups of coffee, inches, miles, laughter, strife . . . the first conclusion I reached was quite simple: obviously, I could measure my life in many different ways.

At first, I thought that logical and chronological ways of measuring time were limited, but I've expanded my thinking to include a vast number: years, days, months, minutes, seconds . . . this line of thought can break down to all sorts of things, including ticks of the clock and measurement by milestones. None of which, incidentally, I decided would be the best way of measuring my life.

Measuring my life by measuring emotions proved quite the headache to think about. How, indeed, do you measure by using heartache or happiness, excitement or apathy? And do certain negative emotions cancel out the positive? How do I reach a sum of emotions, all of them distinct--some of them stark opposite, but some subtler shades of others?

In the end, I have decided that one thing has served as a constant in my life (aside from my religion). In fact, I have owned some of these for as long as I can remember. In short, I would measure my life in post-it notes. As long as I could interchange them with index cards, because these two things have been constants. If there existed a way to resurrect all of the post-it notes that I have ever written, I think they would describe my life astonishingly well. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am of my conclusion . . . and it worries me a little.