easy squeezy...stop chasing.

My long game needs some work. I have no damn idea what I want to “do with my life.” And I resent that question. That question has robbed me of the simplistic enjoyment of a hundred starry skies, of the sensation of my hair on my shoulders under a summer sun begging to melt away my fear. I sit up nights. Having arguments with myself. Existential debates. Long drawn out thoughts that end in me completely paralyzed with what I don’t know. Immobilized by the edifice of indecision; I am absolutely horrified but the irrevocable consequence of making the wrong decision. It’s pathetic.

But I also know that twenty-one year old existentialism is about as useful as a golden retriever chasing his tail, and very comparable. We will not catch the meaning of our lives, the faster we chase after it, the faster it has to go to keep up with us. If we do happen to catch it for a brief moment, what in the hell do we think we are going to do with it? Hold it in our mouths until hunger or our short attention spans force us to let go, Drooling on it until heat and the strange tickling sensation forces us to let go and breathe again, and we find ourselves on yet another madly twirling carousel of our own desire to know ourselves.

We cannot, for the most ridiculous of reasons, fathom that we are attached to our purpose, that it is following us as much as we are following it. And because we cannot see that we cannot miss it, lose it, or escape it, we waste our time and bountiful energy searching for what is already ours. We are children, in so many ways, upsetting ourselves with our imaginary disembodiment. I’ve spent so many precious minutes trying to catch myself, feeling disoriented and headless, trudging through a swamp that is not there. All my feeble attempts at divining direction from a sky dotted with a thousand destinations and no paths, rewards me with only a hundred constellations that smile down knowingly at me, twinkling with the mischief that comes from knowing the end of the tale in which someone you love is deeply entrenched.

The most terrifying thing about all of this, is that I KNOW. I know all of these things, the futility of seeking yourself. I feel the ringing truth that I am my only direction, and the things I choose to do and love and see are where I belong, no matter where I am, who I’m with, or what I’m doing. I know these things. So why in the hell am I the biggest tail chaser I know?