The fiery promise of independence burns brightly in the recesses of my mind, but the chilling thought of loneliness freezes those dreams. Independence is an ideal that I hope to one day grasp, but I don’t know why. Is it to prepare for a possible future loneliness? Those I see who have the least loneliness also have the least need for independence. Yet they are the ones with the most.
Seeing his independence is frightening: a stagnant, dull tradition of mediocre occurrences. But it’s simple. That’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?
I wrote this during the post right before this one, but I couldn’t find anywhere to fit it.
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Isn’t is so convenient that “God’s plan” coincides with the materialistic consumerism on this side of the globe? I’d assume that God’s plan would be something so much more meaningful, for example that most if not all Christians would become ascetic-like missionaries/nomads with socialist ideals (as during Jesus’s time) and run around helping and loving people, like the good Samaritan, who paused his own life and travel for at least a day to help a complete stranger who might have a completely different set of beliefs. It feels so contrived that most Christians want to be in a stable, high-paying job with a nuclear family so they can “reach out” to the non-Christians who have stable, high-paying jobs and their own nuclear families, which is such a niche of a market that I cannot believe that God would send most of his American followers to live that life. In all honesty, it just seems like most Christians choose to live the life they want, and fine-tune the unimportant parts to God’s will, waiting until they break God’s commands to beg for forgiveness, over and over again.
I think it’s about now that I’m realizing that Christian or not, I don’t want to do the 9-5, 5 days / 40 hours a week life. Half of me wants to say that I’d do it to sustain a family: I imagine that a stable income is the price a person would sell their soul, if it meant maintaining a living. I think if I really did have a family or a potential family or a significant other to devote my life to, I would bear the 9-5 life for them. I’d hate it, but they’d make it worth everything. As a Christian, I wouldn’t believe that God’s plan for me is to sell my soul to the devil. The other half of me says that that lifestyle is horrible, but not only that: I wouldn’t have the people to make it worth it.
I’m not sure what’s the middle ground here. Pascal’s wager would work out nicely if I weren’t such a short-sighted person.
Meta-note: I keep going off on random tangents at times, and writing what I feel though those thoughts are extremely disorganized. I think from now on, I’m going to title sections and maybe even give them section numbers and subsection numbers.
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Introduction
School feels so insignificant. Why learn? Why do things? I’ve gotten through twelve years of education, and three and a sixth more of “higher” education. But I’m not even learning the things I want to learn. I don’t even want to learn anything, yet still, at the same time I feel like I love learning. I’m great at programming (or passing programming courses with high marks, at least), but when I look at my colleagues, I see people who actually want to break into the industry and have a career in programming, generally for the money. That’s not what it’s like for me. I want to do something that I’m passionate about, something that can fulfill me, despite the money. Recently (as in the past seven days), two manifest passions have caught my eye, and have made me want to simply quit school (for now or for good) and live my life:
Adventures
This is the prequel to the greatly anticipated hill-star experience I’d like to have (see: The Future Me). To be able to go somewhere, with someone (though I’m actually considering that I don’t need someone to come with me [i.e. climb a mountain, tell no one]) and share/have an exhilarating experience that I’ll be able to look back on and feel impregnated with significance. It’s amazing to feel that the whole world is still virgin and unexplored in some areas, and that it’s so available for me, currently a normal guy, to explore. Maybe this is the reason why some people are so interested in hiking, or in hunting, or in other typical hobbies that people take part in. If I have a passion for it, I’d want it to become my life, right? This goal to become an adventurer and someone who can live in the woods would run parallel with my secret life desire to live in a forest one day, isolated from civilization.
But at the same time: isn’t it convenient that it just happened to be him telling me about his adventures that I’ve suddenly gotten the passion to do so as well? Please, please don’t just be me wanting someone I’ll never have, and me changing my personality for it. I’m hoping so much that this is more than that; my a long-awaited awakening is actually some significant landmark in my life which will change me for the alleged “better” that everyone talks about. Significance. Isn’t that what I’ve always looked for? Then again, M gave me the inspiration to blog and play guitar, both of which I don’t regret. Maybe it’s not so bad, just slightly impure in my justification, to change what I do when it’s because someone I (might possibly) like does/did it too.
Writing
To write is to express oneself. While I have trouble physically in the performing arts (I’d love to be an artistic dancer or a talented musician if I thought I had the capacity for it, much like I’d like to have learned some form of martial arts), the pen and paper is a medium on which I’m sure I can improve myself incrementally and continue to love what I am doing. I could write about whatever I wanted, whatever feels significant to me. I could affect millions or hundreds of millions of people with pieces of literary media so powerful that it would prevent suicides, change lives and minds, and forever impact history and the world of literature.
Discourse
But of course, I’m all talk and no game, a yellow-bellied coward. There runs the risk that, as an adventurer, one day meet my match and die. There runs the risk that, as a writer, I’ll remain in obscurity forever, and maybe I’ll end up regretting my life and wishing that I’d stayed in the programming industry anyway. The fear monster is in my way, once again. Will I just bully myself into working for the industry once I’m graduated anyways?
But I suppose at least by the time I find some adventure I can’t keep up with, I’d have found that to be so fulfilling that I’ll greet my match like an old friend who I’ll depart with. And even if I’m in obscurity as a writer, perhaps I’ll find friendship and community with the small number of fans that I do have, who join me for coffee and a book circle on occasion.
I have no idea where to start to become a new person. I’m not sure if I could just drop ties and start a completely different life. Maybe I won’t even need to do that, and I’ll just be able to start doing things on my own terms, one new item at a time. But I do want to be different, so so much.
