Thimbles of Purpose
May 1, 2011admin No Comments »(Alert–Toy Story 3 spoiler…at least potentially.)
Leah: So what’d you do this evening?
Joe: I watched Toy Story 3.
Leah: Isn’t it sad!?
Joe: Yeah. It was really sad at the end when he goes off to college.
Leah: I know!
Joe: But then I was thinking, that’s not really that sad, because he’ll go to college and meet cool people and have a lot of fun. He’ll learn and laugh and it’ll be great. What’s really sad is how he’s going to lull himself into this false sense of security about how great life is and then he’ll leave college in four years. He won’t be near any of his friends and he’ll be all alone in a big scary world. That’s what’s really sad.
Leah: Joe…I think you’re projecting.
***********
Whether or not it’s true, I’ve always thought I took a much longer view of my life than the average person. When making decisions of any consequence, I routinely jump to the five or ten year window to consider what my best choice might be, the sort of world that is much more easily considered thanks to the past participle. “Will I want to have seen this place?” “Will I want to have done this activity?” “Will I be embarrassed to explain this activity to someone in the future?” It is not, by any means, the only perspective worth considering. In fact, I often find myself laden with too much perspective–sometimes you just need to skip class and go to the ocean or do what feels right rather than what will seem to have felt right.
This is related, at least emotionally, to thinking about my past and future. I wonder whether I took advantage of everything I could in high school or college, or if I really appreciated X person at Y event. I also use those thoughts, those possible regrets or warm, perfect memories, to think about my life right now as though I were five years hence. What sort of warm fuzzy spot in my heart will I have for my first apartment and my first job? Though life doesn’t feel what I would call perfect, will time erase some of that away and I’ll long to be in my younger twenties again?
I took a picture on my phone of my roommates on the metro on the way back home after celebrating one of their birthdays. I knew when I was taking it that I would look back and think, “Gosh, I felt young then. The $70 I just spent on a super nice dinner was really special and really unusual; I don’t spend money like that. I felt more like I was playing a part than being my age and it was fun. These two will look really young in this picture one day.”
Every week and a half or so I try and remind myself to spend five minutes to think about how empty my life is of commitment right now. The only person I have to take care of is myself. I have no dog, no child, no car, no ailing parent, no significant other, no yard, no nothing. I shop for food for myself, I clothe myself, I pay rent for myself. The only real obligation I have is to my roommates, and that’s simply to do my fair share of house work. I know a day will come when I long for this amount of freedom; this lack of extracurricular activity; this daily knowledge that life after 5:30 and on the weekends is by and large mine.
It’s really hard though to live in the moment. I thought time flew by in college, but that’s when every week was different. It flew by, sure, but it was also packed to the brim with activity. Not College (for lack of a better term) goes by even more quickly. I’ve had a fortunate string of guests and NYC visits the last three months, but most weeks are comparable to each other. Work ebbs and flows, but it doesn’t quite have the same crescendo and climax that a 14-week college course did. There is a lot to it that stays the same every day. And this sameness makes feeling a strong sense of purpose difficult. I have a broad sense of purpose but…hmmm.
Imagine a row of thimbles, each large enough to hold 1 milliliter of purpose. Over any given six month period, I have, let’s say, 100 milliliters of purpose. So when my college semester is 98 days long, I’ve got plenty of purpose to go around. In practice, some thimbles, or days, were only 1/2 a milliliter and others were overflowing with purpose, but there was plenty of purpose to go around.
Now think about the considerably less structured Not College. I have hundreds and hundreds of thimbles laying before me, but still about the same amount of purpose (and perhaps even a little less since I’m not surrounded by similarly purposed peers). Every weekday requires a certain amount of purpose, enough to get up on time, wear clean clothes to work, pack a lunch, and be at least moderately productive so that I continue to be employed. Then, ideally, I put some more purpose into every weekday so that I go above expectations and succeed at work, for the benefit of myself and my place of employment (who’s efforts I strongly believe in). Some purpose will also go to special events, like going home or perhaps Saturday night when my friends and I go out.
What’s left though is a lot of 6 PM-10 PM time periods and weekends whose thimbles are fairly dry of purpose. I want to read more and take advantage of all the extra time I have. I have desires. I have a prototypical world that I’m far from matching. But it requires a greater sense of urgency than I’ve found as of late. I’m looking at so, so many thimbles and it’s hard to know for sure where they’re going or where to best put my efforts. My age no longer connotes it’s own purpose (23 doesn’t mean anything). I am floating in a nebulous void of self-determination, but it’s hard to self-determine when theirs nothing much to grab on to. I know, I’m simply begging the question. (Look it up if it’s not immediately obvious what that last sentence meant.)
To go back to the beginning, this is all to say that I’m not sure how to feel about this time period in my life. I have a lot of feelings and a lot of thoughts about how I could feel (or maybe thoughts about the thoughts that I might have about how I feel?–that was a joke), but I’m not sure how I do feel. And that’s okay only so long as it’s not permanent. These are just late night musings though–I get to research and write for a living. I have a great thing going, it’s just a little less clear than I’d like it to be at the moment.
Looks like Obama’s about to make a statement that Osama Bin Laden has been killed. I’m going to go watch that–have a good night.
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