How It Seems Wasn't How it "Was"

During the meditation retreat today I focused only on the method of my huatou, although for the second hour, I had a lot of drowsy thoughts that had very little meaning. It's one thing to have wandering thoughts that lead from one to another, but it's quite another to have "meaningless" thoughts which don't amount to anything. As I was walking to my class in the afternoon, I was troubled again by the idea of a high school reunion. Two questions that currently puzzle me: in the history of my own "walk" through various ideas, is there one single idea that defines my life story, or is something I could "take back with me" in my imaginary reunion with the people of life that is passing before me? And secondly, related to the first: can any life be "defined" with any kind of certainty?

   These questions frankly scare me, but that is the purpose of these questions: to make one think and to take stock of what has happened in the past. I personally think that the only idea I can "take back" to my previous life is the story of not clinging to the notion of a self. This is what lead me to Buddhism in the first place, which is to find the mind that is not locked in the self or self concept. Whether I have embodied this principle in my life or not is debatable, but I would say that the principles of Buddhism have most helped me in my journey in life. They provide me with a spiritual compass through which I can understand the reasons why I suffer and how anyone for that matter gets ensnared in the clinging to a static sense of self or reputation.

   At the same time-an even scarier thought---I don't really think that what "happened" in my teenage years could be said to have "happened" in any objective sense or point of reference. It's entirely my own imagination, memory and interpretation, and I believe that the idea of meeting others who have different interpretations is perhaps most frightening. It touches upon the fragile and tenuous notion of what it means to live a "full" life when there are an infinite number of lenses through which that life could have been lived, chosen and navigated. If there is even a single "one" path that ever defined me as a person growing into the world, I am sure that this one path is also a narration told in one particular moment in an unfolding, relentless stream of time.