Interlude: The Loading Bar

Toward the end of our stay, I asked Katja how much progress she was making in her project of finding herself. She said she couldn't attach a value to it. Germans are always avoiding questions by saying "I don’t want to generalize," or, "You can't express it in numbers."

I said, "Yes you can: If the project of finding yourself were a loading bar on a computer, at what percent would it be right now?"

She refused to answer that question for several days, but shortly before we had to leave, she gave me an answer: 80% I was surprised. I would think that of all of us, she would be least "loaded."

"But there's another loading bar going at the same time," she said. "Deloading. That's at about 50%."
I asked Kobus if the project of finding himself were a loading bar on a computer, where would it be now? He said: "At about 75%. But frozen there."
My Loading Bar:

If I had a "becoming myself" loading bar, I think it would be closer to 51%, 52%. Maybe that's not true. I am very set in my ways, I have strong opinions about who I should be and I am well into the second half of my life. Probably it should be about 80% or more. But I can’t bring myself to do that. I want it to go on and on. It feels like I have only recently earned the right to find myself ion the first place, or gotten on the right track. I want it to go much further than just another 20%, and I don't really care where.