that lights a fire under your ass. Purpose, it keeps you going strong, like a car with a full tank of gas. Everyone else has a purpose, so what's mine?
Ah, the poignant words of Avenue Q. Princeton says it just right- "I don't know where I'm gonna look, but I'm gonna find my purpose. gotta find out, don't wanna wait, gotta make sure that my life will be great- I'm gonna find my purpose, before it's too late."
Too late? I'm 16 years old. How is it too late for anything? I am barely legal to drive, I can't even sign my own permission slips, and I'm expected to know what, where, and how I want to do for the rest of my life. How am I going to make money? Will I enjoy my job? What am I good at, if anything?
What do I want? It's really a complicated question, complicated further by long-term and short-term. In the short term, I'd like to switch into Mr. Johnson's 7th period English class because hey, almost ALL of my friends are in that class. And I like my friends, even though they consistently do not read this blog or listen to me while I talk. Are my friends a short-term goal? Realistically, college is one year from now. How many of them will I keep in touch with? Hopefully, many- the wonders of facebook are many. However, it's far too easy to just let contact dip, and by the time either party wants to catch up it's just a little too late. It's really hard to fill someone in on the last 3 years of your life and then just pick up where you left off, and having history makes it harder, not easier to build a friendship from scratch. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it's hard and therefore doesn't happen much. Is switching into 7th period a long-term goal of saving my friendships, some of which would or could be based mostly in that class? Or is it a selfish, short-term goal- 7th period would be more fun? 7th period would mean I was actually awake in that class. 7th period would mean sleeping in a little bit on B days. 7th period would mean losing time in the afternoons that I could be using to get a job, or volunteer for something, or write a book. Do I want to switch into 7th period? Yes, I do. Will I? Probably not. What will this gain me? Regret, sadness, feeling left out (like usual) and maybe a better shot at a job or another class, a better college with a bigger workload, early afternoons all week long. Is this worth it? Right now, the answer feels like no. But I'll do it anyways, because that's how it goes- work hard junior year to build that GPA and that resume and then senior year, lay off a little and enjoy high school. BUT WAIT, there's MORE. Don't slack off senior year, actually keep your grades up and add more to your schedule to show that no, you're not a normal teenager, you're special, you're a workaholic who will do well at the bitterly cold rah-rah snooty campus that you are trying so hard to achieve without knowing much about the place. What do I want?
We just read Decline and Fall, by Evelyn Waugh. Evelyn is a man's name. This was a new fact to me. The main character, Paul Pennyfeather, is a pushover of a man who just rolls with the punches, turns the other cheek so incredibly much that he's almost despicable to me because of it. He's no hero- he's a shadow, a mirror, a person so dependent on others to define his world that he gets into one scrape after another and finally ends up in jail, sentenced to seven years of hard labor. But when he gets there, this weakling, this pushover, this willy-nilly wanderer with nothing to say for himself and no control over his fate, he is relieved. He LIKES prison, loves it in fact. He asks for an extension on his solitary confinement. Why?
Because in prison, you aren't expected to make decisions. Nobody wants you to make a career plan in jail. There's nobody to impress, nobody relying on you, no responsibilities or scrutinies or scheduling. There is the next bag to sew or the next rock to break, the next meal and maybe some reading. Paul Pennyfeather breathes, really breathes in this section of the book. I was disappointed for him when he got broken out.
Is that bad? That I almost envy him? I know, of course, that life in prison, Californian prison, in the current day, is wildly dissimilar to Blackstone Gaol of Waugh's England. But how can it be that by committing a crime, your welfare is taken care of? Prison is punishment and removal of dangerous persons from society, or it's supposed to be, and I know that I would hate it with all my heart. My liberty is important to me. But Pennyfeather's prison... he thinks that at last, there, he is truly free.
I'd like to go live by myself in a cave on a tropical island, with my laptop and a good wireless signal, and a monthly delivery of toilet paper and breakfast cereal. I'd grow some corn and peas and broccoli, I'd raise some chickens, I'd write, and I'd breathe in the salty sea air, I'd take in the beautiful changing view. I'd welcome guests for about a month every year, and then spend the rest by myself, or maybe if I REALLY liked a boy, he could come too. I'd like to tend my garden, avoid big bugs, lie in the sun, charge my laptop off of solar panels (because everybody knows that the whole hook-a-potato-up-with-wires thing doesn't really work, it just completes a circuit, it doesn't actually power anything) and be responsible to nobody but my chickens/surfer island environmentalist diving superhot articulate me-adoring boyfriend. Paul Pennyfeathers would not be allowed on my island, unless they proved that they had really tried to get there. The career plan would be thus: to live.
I'm a girl who was raised in suburbia. I really like toilets and taps that boiling water come out of. I'm a night owl who needs light and battery far more after dark than in prime sun-harvesting hours. I could change, but I probably won't. I won't go live on my fantasy island with the parrots and the sharks and no monkeys because monkeys are scary. I'm too ambitious, too conventional, and too social for that to work well. I'm too flaky and easily bored and tied to my habits to really pull that off. Paul Pennyfeather worked in prison because it fit perfectly into his personality. I'm not a prison girl. I bear many responsibilities quite well, actually. I like to be a leader, I like to meet new people and I love to teach them new things. I like to discover, and be loud, and giggle, and I have a really strong work ethic. But what do I use all of that for?
My island is such a good fantasy because if you live in paradise, what do you need a purpose for? When it's just you and your chickens and your imaginary and therefore conversationally limited boyfriend, nobody's asking you "what next?" Purpose is simply to continue, to be, to live and do as you please, to achieve or not, as you wish. In the world as it is now, as one of 6-almost-7 billion people, purpose is essential. What's yours, what's your real purpose, what is it that makes you different from all those other people? It's not your traits that set you apart, it's your goals and dreams and hopes that define you. If you have no purpose, then who are you? What's the use of you? What are you doing here on earth, taking up space and using up oxygen? What am I doing here, consuming and consuming and giving back a whole lot of nothing?
Why do I want to switch into 7th period English? What difference does it make? When I grow up and save the world (that is my purpose, actually. Saving the world. From itself. From myself. From you.) how much difference will it have made in my life, that I switched into that class and had some good laughs with my friends, that I missed out on one job just to get another, that I slept in a little more on certain days and therefore had more brain power to tackle that great big problem that I will one day solve?
Purpose. It's that little flame. Purpose. It keeps you going strong when you're trying to finish another pointless paper, trying to turn in some more busy work, trying to fill out another application for a school you might not even want to go to. There's a point to it all. There's a reason. This is all working toward what I'm meant to do. (Meant by whom, is a whole 'nother matter.) Right now, what makes this all worth the while?
The hope that I'll find my purpose. Keeping options open, preparing for the future. That's the name of the game, but the future is coming way too fast, far too fast and it's just rushing toward me with a big question mark emblazoned on the front, a gas-guzzling train carrying some poisoned whales and a horde of angry telemarketers and a big unanswered question right at the front.
Am I prepared? I'll probably never know. And I'll probably just keep doing things by the book, working hard for that intangible goal, or maybe working hard for my imaginary island and my imaginary adorable boyfriend. What's the point? I hope to find out- that's why I keep doing this. ("this" being... life.)
Will anyone read this post? Maybe. Will it be my mom? Yes. Will anyone else read this? Doubtful. But it would be nice to get some comments. I'm not going to get my hopes up.
