gazing down the road

A Facebook friend (more an age-old acquaintance than anything) posted a news article on their wall about how the years of our twenties determine, for the most part, the shape and contour of our lives. There are exceptions, of course; but statistically-speaking, the twenties are when our habits are set, our personalities made concrete, our worldviews cemented, our characters set in stone. Who we are in our twenties is who we'll most likely be 'til the end of our days. Andy and I got Dusmesh this past Saturday, and we talked a whole lot about this. I wondered aloud how I would look back on these days, and I shared with him my sentiments: "My response will probably be, first, 'What the hell was I thinking?!' and, second, 'It was a helluva good time.'" I know I'll look back fondly on these days, those long summer nights where we were just "cool kids livin' like the good times never end, we just daydream, waste away in a stoned out summer's end." And as much as I may look back on these days with a cinematic skew, the reality is that these days have been filled with much wrestling regarding life and the future, and this wrestling gains a greater importance in light of the fact that its end-result (if there can be such a thing) isn't just something for the moment but something that will strain itself out throughout the rest of my life. 

The kind of person I am now will very likely be the kind of person I will be, period. And so the begging question: "Who do I want to be?"

Late last week I enjoyed a hefty steak dinner and Irish Reds with Dewenter, and we sat in his apartment's little kitchen cutting into our steaks and smothering our sweet potatoes with butter, and we retold stories from our high school years like we always do, and we talked about how we had great and irrational dreams, how we were so naive about things, how we didn't have a clue how the world worked. And I'm forced to wonder, Has any of that changed? Or are we just buying into different irrational dreams, naive about other sorts of things, and in the end can we say that we understand not only the functions of reality but its purpose? It's seven years after the fact and though we've both changed greatly, much remains the same; of the interconnected web of friendships stretched over our high school years, he and I are the only ones remaining of that fragile and decrepit web, and we know one another better than we know most of our compatriots. We struggle with the same things, fall in the same ways, go through the same emotional trials, have all our issues... All this to say that maturity hasn't chiseled us into tried-&-true golden pinnacles of our personalities, but rather simply changed us. But which changes are good and which are bad? Hell if I know. But I know that while I've grown stronger in some areas, I've grown weaker in others; and I know that there are aspects of the "old me" that I desire to be resurrected, re-birthed, but I can't help shake the feeling that those days are gone and that me is gone and any thought of "going back" is nothing short of retrograde, devolution, an attempt at birthing "ignorance is bliss". But then I wonder if that's just an excuse: I know, for the most part (I like to think), how I've gone from Point A to Point B, and I know that there may very well indeed be a Point C, and I wonder how much control I have over that. Is it possible to paint a portrait of Point C and then move towards that, increasing the odds, so-to-speak, of Point C unraveling as hoped for? I used to think No, but I'm starting to think Yes. 

"Who do I want to be?" That's the primary question here. 

And the secondary question: "How do I get there?"

A few weeks ago I met up with an old friend. Years before he found himself in dire straits, feeling trapped and hopeless in a dead-end life working as a grocer. He had his pity party and then I made the point clear: "It's not that you're hopeless. You're just lazy." He knew change was within his grasp; and he didn't just know this, he knew what it would take to make that change happen. He just didn't want to go through the effort. "The fact that you can make change happen means that you're not really hopeless," I told him. "Hope is there, hope is real, it just can't be waited for, you've got to actually take some responsibility for your own life. You've got to buckle down, grow a pair, and make it happen." It took him a while, but he did. When we spoke last, he was living in community, got a new job he loves, and is flourishing in the love of family and friends. He stopped sitting on his ass and got to work. Now I'm in his position, at least in a sense; and I know that change can be made, that there are steps to that change, that they will be difficult indeed; but I know that change is possible.

The problem, again: "Who do I want to be?"

If I don't know this, how can I sketch a Point C? How can I move towards it?

Sometimes I wonder if I even know who I really want to be.

I know who I was, I know who I am, but... Who I want to be?

Or am I just lying to myself?

Maybe I do know who I want to be, but I stave it off as irrational, illusory, nothing but a dream destined to remain forever a dream? If I'm honest with myself, and if I push off the fears and anxieties, I can catch a glimpse of it. When I stand alone in nature, with the trees wrapped around me, nothing but the wind and the rattling of the leaves and the tumbling waters winding through the creek, I know--in the silence--who I want to be, I can see it opening itself before me, filling every nook and cranny of my imaginative powers. I become captivated by it, drawn to it... But when the noises return, when "real life" settles about me, the vision fades, breaks apart, disintegrates. It's hidden there, somewhere, inside me, drawn out by beauty, by peace, by hope. And I'm thinking maybe I should pay attention to that.