![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Graduation is on Saturday, and then I'll be done. I'll have my million-dollar piece of fancy paper that I've been working towards for the past four five six twenty-one years.
I'll be 22 when I head to Japan, 23 when I get back. If all goes as currently planned, I'll finish grad school by 24 and be established in a job at 25.
Why do I feel like there's some sort of ultimate list of the years of my life, and every time I complete a year a huge and ultimate pen checks off another number, another item?
I've had a full week to ponder the implications of receiving a million-dollar piece of paper, and I have no great conclusions to share. I haven't come to terms with it, I have no more answers than anyone else at this stage of my life. I'm fairly certain I know what I'm doing for the next year, which is more than some people can say, but that's about the extent of it.
You know, I never really thought I'd live this long.
Not that I thought I would die, no. I just . . . never thought I'd be alive to receive my diploma. Heck, I never thought I'd make it beyond my years as a teenager. As if I would simply and spontaneously cease to exist when I turned 20, or when I completed my last class. As if everything would simply stop.
Even when I thought of myself in the future, it was never in the short term, or even in the somewhat longer term. It was always in the far future, when I was old, and my hair had gone steel-grey, and I had laugh-lines and grandchildren and a half-dozen cats and a house of my own and photo albums overflowing with pictures from around the world. And peace of mind, and fulfillment, and content at long last. My vision always skipped the messy in-between bits, the stress and heartache and uncertainty that is the price of living in this world from day to day.
There is a certain ironic similarity to the way I write. I always know the beginning of the story, and I know how I want it to end, it's just getting from point A to point B that presents all the difficulty.
Especially since I'm currently at point C, a point inconveniently located between points A and B and disappointingly distant in terms of space, time, and my own good sense from point D, the nearest decent pub.
My dilemma is hardly new or unique, but even so it is tremendously isolating. Decisions loom, and the fact that everyone has to make them is hardly a comfort. I've never understood the saying 'misery loves company'-- misery most certainly does not love company. If everyone's miserable, how can you possibly feel justified in complaining about it? It's much better to be miserable by yourself; then you can complain and everyone will be sympathetic and make you tea and hug you a lot. When everyone's miserable all you can do is sit around and compound your collective unhappiness and be snippy at each other.
I watched the final episode in Babylon 5 with a friend of mine tonight, and felt a certain alarming identification with Sheridan. Alarming because Sheridan was preparing for death, and I'm simply graduating from college. But are they not the same? Death and graduation are both the endings of a limited period of time. True, they can both be seen as beginnings, as well, but if they are beginnings then they are beginnings filled with uncertainty and fear. What happens afterwards is an unknown, both in our control and not at the same time. There are suddenly new possibilities and responsibilities, and even that which was familiar is made unfamiliar because we are made new by the event. We step into the future trailing the debris of our past lives. There are lines that connect us to the past that we drag onward with us; there are broken lines that trail after us, grasping at anything they encounter. We are free, and yet we have never been less free.
Because freedom means choice, an endless succession of choices, and each one binds us more securely than the last.
I'll be 22 when I head to Japan, 23 when I get back. If all goes as currently planned, I'll finish grad school by 24 and be established in a job at 25.
Why do I feel like there's some sort of ultimate list of the years of my life, and every time I complete a year a huge and ultimate pen checks off another number, another item?
I've had a full week to ponder the implications of receiving a million-dollar piece of paper, and I have no great conclusions to share. I haven't come to terms with it, I have no more answers than anyone else at this stage of my life. I'm fairly certain I know what I'm doing for the next year, which is more than some people can say, but that's about the extent of it.
You know, I never really thought I'd live this long.
Not that I thought I would die, no. I just . . . never thought I'd be alive to receive my diploma. Heck, I never thought I'd make it beyond my years as a teenager. As if I would simply and spontaneously cease to exist when I turned 20, or when I completed my last class. As if everything would simply stop.
Even when I thought of myself in the future, it was never in the short term, or even in the somewhat longer term. It was always in the far future, when I was old, and my hair had gone steel-grey, and I had laugh-lines and grandchildren and a half-dozen cats and a house of my own and photo albums overflowing with pictures from around the world. And peace of mind, and fulfillment, and content at long last. My vision always skipped the messy in-between bits, the stress and heartache and uncertainty that is the price of living in this world from day to day.
There is a certain ironic similarity to the way I write. I always know the beginning of the story, and I know how I want it to end, it's just getting from point A to point B that presents all the difficulty.
Especially since I'm currently at point C, a point inconveniently located between points A and B and disappointingly distant in terms of space, time, and my own good sense from point D, the nearest decent pub.
My dilemma is hardly new or unique, but even so it is tremendously isolating. Decisions loom, and the fact that everyone has to make them is hardly a comfort. I've never understood the saying 'misery loves company'-- misery most certainly does not love company. If everyone's miserable, how can you possibly feel justified in complaining about it? It's much better to be miserable by yourself; then you can complain and everyone will be sympathetic and make you tea and hug you a lot. When everyone's miserable all you can do is sit around and compound your collective unhappiness and be snippy at each other.
I watched the final episode in Babylon 5 with a friend of mine tonight, and felt a certain alarming identification with Sheridan. Alarming because Sheridan was preparing for death, and I'm simply graduating from college. But are they not the same? Death and graduation are both the endings of a limited period of time. True, they can both be seen as beginnings, as well, but if they are beginnings then they are beginnings filled with uncertainty and fear. What happens afterwards is an unknown, both in our control and not at the same time. There are suddenly new possibilities and responsibilities, and even that which was familiar is made unfamiliar because we are made new by the event. We step into the future trailing the debris of our past lives. There are lines that connect us to the past that we drag onward with us; there are broken lines that trail after us, grasping at anything they encounter. We are free, and yet we have never been less free.
Because freedom means choice, an endless succession of choices, and each one binds us more securely than the last.
no subject
Maybe we come WAYYY different perspectives & histories, but I've been personally waiting for point C my whole life.
Yes point C has uncertainty. But it also has freedom. Life is only a checklist if you choose it to be. And even in a checklist, there can still be adventure in everything.
Don't you understand? This is the GOOD part. Think of it: before now life really _was_ a checklist. Go to school, deal with school. Live with parents, deal with parents. Everything the way it's supposed to be - society commands - step 1,2,3,. Point D you're already in you're job, in the stride(rut?) of life, and everything is predictable again. New things are expected of you, and the societal expectations are back.
These are your 20s 'Rena-san. This is God's gift to you to fuck up, or have a blast, and just LIVE life. There aint many opportunities for that. This time, is gold.
~ RK
no subject
Congratulations on making it through that particular long haul, and good luck in Japan.
no subject
I think a fairly large number of writers can sympathize deeply with that one. It's always the getting there that's hard.
Anyway, good luck! I'd say, "Don't ponder so deeply and let things happen," but I think that's like telling a mountain to stand up and move or me to stop worrying about my GPA. ;) So I will leave it at that.