I know I'm supposed to find something I'm not too miserable doing, toil away for 40 hours a week for most of the rest of my life, get married to someone whose goals involve doing the same, have a couple of kids, take on a mortgage, and retire too tired to do the traveling that's always been at the back of my mind.
But I can't live that way. I just can't.
I want to share my life with someone, but he has to be the right someone. He's got to have passion and drive and perseverance and wanderlust and a curious mind that's always probing, turning over the corners of things to see what's underneath. I won't settle, and so I'm mostly alone in that sense. I flirt. I date. I have the occasional affair if I feel he's worth the investment of my time, and then I get back to experiencing this world and living my life to the fullest.
It was roughly a year ago that I came to the startling conclusion that most of my ambitions relied on other people coming through. I wanted to meet the right person, get married, become a mother, became renowned for my writing. And I lost myself. But I think I'm on the road to self-rediscovery and it all stems from a rather simple premise: Just live.
I want to experience places, things and people. I want to try new foods, marvel at graffiti in the unlikeliest of places, meet people just as delightfully lost as I am. I want to help as many people as I can along the way, feel things shift within me as all the barriers I didn't even know I'd erected come crumbling down. I want to merge with life itself, and feel the Universe pulse through my veins. I don't really want distinction. I want to write because it is the expression of what truth I've gleaned from my journey. I want to love because something awakens the impulse in me. I want to look ahead, not at the endless years I must labor in the name of a cause I do not believe in. But instead, I want to look ahead to the prospect of discovery. Of unearthing something in myself or someone else-something no one knew was there. I want to find hidden messages in street art and learn to utter the beautiful syllables of other tongues and smile at strangers, and share all I have and open myself up wide enough that I can accept the gifts others offer me, whether they be gifts of food, wine, money, or their time, more precious than any of the rest.
They say passion fades with age and value years of experience doing the same thing and laud the settled life and respect the man who comes home ravaged from his work or the woman who accepts no help as she slowly pieces her life back together. And that is not me. It has never been me.
I love people. The song and dance of them. The stories they tell when you scrape away the rust they've accumulated in this climate that is so inhospitable to their spirit, so at odds with what they are at their core-a core precious enough to pay their way out of servitude to the gods of capital.
I only want to live. I don't have any other goals and I don't want any other goals. Whatever work puts me in closest contact with the humanity still humming at the heart of the Machine-that is enough for me.
