2006-04-10
My Shoes Don't Fit Me Because They Feel They Don't
I've spent the last few minutes of my life reading my friend Kim's newest journal. She used to be on Diary-X, but when that tanked she slipped over to LJ for a bit and now she's back at D-Land. That makes me a little bit happy because she's staying old school like me, but that's a tangent that is irrelevant.
Anyway, she uses two Hebrew words as her D-Land name: the words for "dark" and "light" (or something like that). I never mentally delved into that until I was able to back track to her first entry. There, she listed the things in her life that were the "light" side of her. She also listed the things in her life that were the "dark" things, or the things that she didn't especially enjoy.
When I finished with that entry, my mind started thinking about how everyone has the capacity for both good and evil within them. I really think that is true; don't you? Perhaps even Hitler did something good in his life--helped a little girl find her way home when he was a teenager? Stood up for a smaller kid against playground bullies? I'm not proud of the fact that I've done bad things, but I don't think I've done excessive amounts of evil. I think I am normal in that way. Admittedly, there are things that I have done that will never again see the light of day--I have not told one person and I never will. But I think in general, my evil is average.
I can't discount the good in my life, though. It's a human trait to concentrate on the bad and not the good, but the good in my life is so rich: friends, family, talent, education, love. Sometimes I wonder what the world would be like if everyone was a little bit more optimistic.
I like to think that I've come into my own, this my first year at college and away from home. It has not been without its tribulations, nor has it been without its joy. There have been times when I wanted to curl up into a ball and die, and a week later I was on the polar opposite of the mood scale. I've fallen in and out of love with life many times this year, and I've discovered a richness to life that exists even if I go to school in southeast Missouri.
I think that's what life really is about. In my mind, life boils down to a system of emotional ups and downs. The severity of the changes differ, but everyone has their good moments and moments in which they're at their worst. Maybe that's what's so intriguing to me about Kim's name on D-Land. It reminds me of the effect that both light and dark have on people; I wonder if they both could exist simotaneously.
This is beginning to lead about a revolution in my own life. This weekend I've decided to not go to Mizzou if I transfer. I will apply and keep it open as an option, but it will be far from my first choice. I've begun to understand that I have to come into my own in order to be happy. I think that if I go to Mizzou, I will be too tempted to remain in the same orbit that I've always existed in and not attempt to challenge myself. Hopefully that will not happen at SLU or Rockhurst, or perhaps Loyola or Knox or Wesleyan. An apt simile would be my life being like a small rocket. If I propel myself as hard and as fast as I can feasibly go, I have no doubt that I can reach whatever galaxy I wish to. At the same time, I think if I let myself I can fall back to Earth and never reach my full potential.
Yeah, I know how corny that was. Shove it.
I need to find a job and a life that makes me happy. That's why I'm an English major and will remain so despite the protestations of my friends' parents and the chiding I get from some friends. Right now, I don't care how hard it will be to get a job with it. Right now, I'd rather concentrate on the here and now and not some ethereal future. Right now, writing and literature is my passion and by God's will it will remain so. In three years I might end up in Mississippi; in one year I might find myself on the road to going to college in Chicago; in a little more than one month I will be starting what will most likely be the hardest thing I've done in my life yet.
I welcome the challenge. With my mouth wide open to recieve the fruits of my labor, I welcome the challenge of my life as a whole. It'll be bitter and sweet at the same time--bittersweet at its core definition.
I watch as two of my friends prepare to eventually be married. I also watch two of my other friends, who have been dating a little more than three months, toss around the prospect of engagement and marriage. I think one of those couples will be happy, but I pray that both will be. I'm not ready for that, though. I was told today that one of my friends can't see me getting married until I'm 25 or older. I think she's right. I need to pull a Barry--rather, live the life of my father. I want to narrowly escape being sent overseas for a war, go to my generation's equivalent to Woodstock, and live in as many places in the country as I can. I want to spend a year and a half in Europe backpacking, living in hostels and cheap hotels and--debatably--sleeping my way across the continent. There's a side of me that wants to live in Europe and Hong Kong and South Africa. Maybe that's the 19-year old inside of me.
Maybe that's where my life is leading me right now.
Am I destined for the life of an expatriate?
Am I destined for the life of a family-centered, upper-middle crust businessman?
Does destiny even exist? I hope it doesn't. I don't like the notion that I'm not in control of my own life.
I wish that I didn't feel like my life was leading me around in circles. Granted, that is also the way of the article, essay, and online journal entry. Therefore, excusez-moi, I shall be leaving. Quickly, before I go off on another tangent.
ragnarok2013 at 12:32 a.m.