Life has a funny way about the way it is. The ups and downs and all of the little things that bring us to where we are. It wasn't that long ago that I knew what the next five years of my life would hold. At eighteen I knew that I would go to school and teach. That was what I would do. It was everything after that that was shrouded in a fog. I couldn't see what my future held. I didn't really worry about it.
The beautiful thing about being eighteen is that it didn't seem to matter. Life is something we ride with possibilities and excitement found in change and moving and dreaming. I made the choice to let go and float along with the breeze. Looking back I wonder if I missed something that all of the happy people have. The dreams and goals and the desire to go after them at the expense of everything else. Too often I feel like a leaf watching the seeds planting themselves and growing into something more as I drift along on this breeze.
But I can't be the only one.
I can't be the only person who doesn't know what they are working for. The picture book story of a man and a woman getting married and having children with a little house and a dog and cat and a 9-5 is not the story I want to read, let alone live in. I work a job that doesn't draw out my passion and bring me joy. I know I can't do this forever. I will get back to teaching and I will find the pure peace of looking over a crowd of students who are discussing and writing and reading. I can't sit through a job that I hate for the rest of my life. I feel stuck here for now, but that is only for now.
I have been married. Do I really want to do that again? The institution that absorbs the lives of so many, and spits far too many back out, is a strange creature. We are told that getting married is what we should all want and that a family is what we all want and that we should go to school to get a job so we can raise a family and spend our lives raising children so they can do the same thing. This goal feeds so many people that I can't help but to question myself.
The institution of marriage is a piece of paper. It's a tax break. It's permission to the spouse to be able to go places and make decisions for the other. Marriage is not love, but love can be a marriage. Can't love be unmarried too?
My thoughts tend to push me to think that two people who are together because they want to be and don't have to be based on any legal or religious obligation are two people who are really in love. Their commitment is one of the heart. I realize the idealism of that scenario and I recognize that, although my romanticism has been tempered under fire, the thought of two people staying together like that is a romantic thought. But I like it. It doesn't feel forced.
I feel like life shouldn't have to be forced. We all have to do things that we don't want to do, sometimes. I have a hard time believing that we all have to do things we don't want to do all the time, though. There does need to be a balance. The thought of living a life with a job I hate and a relationship I am bound to is my version of hell.
I don't hold strongly to visions of grandeur anymore. I have grown substantially from that child of a year ago. I don't feel the need to do something amazing and earth shattering to find my happiness. But I don't pretend that I can live in a numb misery either. Life is always whizzing past us. Even as a moment is passing us, it is already gone. Realizing this, I am looking for value in all the small things. Shopping for a shower curtain to hang in my bathroom, fixing my toilet, deciding what color to paint a room, looking over a freshly weeded front yard - these are places that I find a contentment.
These are the places I was blind to not that long ago.
The difference between me now and me at 18 is that I was able to see five years ahead. I can barely see what my next year holds. The thing that is still the same is that I don't mind not knowing. There are goals and plans, but they will change or drift slightly as life introduces the next thing and the next thing after that. I suppose it is part of life to see where it takes you.
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