I always thought being an adult was going to
be different. Not sure how different but I did
expect it to be different. I feel most aware of
time and it's passage than I have ever been. In
childhood and school days it always felt like
time was this never ending vastness that was
stretching far into the future. As the years have
passed I see time as a thing that is hurrying to
rush past me before I can even comprehend
what has occurred. Milestone moments of my
life feel like blips on my life and they begin to
recede into the cavern of memory. I imagined
that by this age I might be a husband and father
but that has yet to be the case. I live in an age
of infinite information yet I feel true wisdom to
be in available in precipitously small amounts.
I am not alone in how I live but I know many
who live vastly different lives. There is no right
or wrong in this but rather in what we grow to
value and love. I ask myself what I want and
oftentimes it falls into a few humble things:
to be able to provide for myself, to be left
alone to my own devices, indulge my mind
and writing, to travel and explore at my leisure,
to enjoy the company of family and friends, to live
a life not dictated by financial and societal pressures
that seem to grind so many into husks. I have a job,
a car, bills and obligations of my own choosing,
and I am largely happy. I do feel unease at what has
been done or left undone. I think about the coming
years and wonder how they will be. They will be as
they must. Of that I am as certain. I think of my father
and how he is the most adult person I have ever known.
His work ethic, his sense of duty to his wife and children,
I have known no one more exemplary of the qualities I
feel make a good adult. I know he is human and fallible.
He has made his mistakes. I feel as thought I am lost and
wandering. Am I waiting to be found? If so, by who or
what? Perhaps I have merely been in search of myself.
There are times I cannot help but feel foolish. How dare
I consider myself an artist when there are so many others
far more talented and deserving of such a title. I create
in my own ways for myself because I must. If I were to
not do this I would die a slow death of the soul.
I am reaching out. I am looking for ecstasy, peace, and transcendence. I wish to be more than what I am.
I wish for everything and nothing. That is all I could
ever ask for. I hope my journey has many more years
in it. There are disappointments and heartache but I
would be foolish to think of myself as having been
the only person to feel such ache. My pain and suffering
is but a drop in the vastness of time. Perhaps not even that.
In time this may change or it may not. I am here and I am
thinking about this life, this self. I continue on and I hope
I am making the best of it. Perhaps some day I will be at
home in a small house of my own deep in the land of my
father and grandfathers, listening to the birds and wind,
wondering about nothing and everything.
