Why are We Racing Towards an Unwanted Ending?

All rush and no rest.

We work all our lives to the next class, the best schools, the best scores, tests, internships, jobs, up, up, up, and then when we finally get that higher salary job, or we get that diploma, it’s not nearly as grandiose as we were previously led to believe. It feels… flat… and just the same as before.

When I received my bachelor’s degree at Randolph, it felt like a dream; swirling from last class, to last final, through the graduation ceremony, family dinners, and I remember setting up for the graduation party at home, laying out my diploma and simply staring at it. Yes, I graduated. I held the proof right there in my hand, the concrete evidence that I had been doing something worthwhile with my life. I had maintained decent grades and admirable respect throughout these years, known and chased what I wanted to be since a young age, and yet… I feel no different. I laid the degree back down on the table and proceeded to drift through the party torn by my feeling of hallowed out achievement.

We don’t take time to stop and smell the flowers.

During the Winter break of my last year in college, I went to visit Costa Rica, and just in the brief week that I was there, I fell in love. I have generally been criticized for being slow –I use too much water in the shower –I’m the last person to finish food –heck, those who know me well, tell me to meet them half an hour earlier than when they actually want to meet. There have been a few (rare) occasions when I have arrived before everyone else, or when I have gotten dressed, tripping over myself, in five minutes flat. But in Costa Rica it’s different. For once, I found a place that naturally sings with my inner syncopation. There, it was stressed to be in the moment, to be conscious of your actions and the life around you, to take everything as it comes, much like the push and pull of waves.

After my home-grown graduation party, I gathered all the gifts and began going through them with Thank You cards ready to be written in. As I opened them one by one, I found a gift from my sister, the wrapping paper and card made to look like a graduation cap, and when I opened the box I found a necklace in twisted silver stamped with words, “the journey is the reward.” What a lousy thing to say… Isn’t it?

No. Now I understood. The capstone is not the most important mark of excellence. The end result is not what we’re after in books or tales of adventures. “Happily ever after” only comes as a surprise the first few times. It’s the struggle, the growth of the individual and how they adapt to the many complications of their journey.

So why then, are we driving faster and faster towards this ending, albeit a paper saying that you are worthy, or a prestigious position, or higher paygrade, or a fancy house, when it’s not all that we thought it would be? When we are moaning and groaning and utterly unsatisfied, dishearten by what we spend our time doing? We tolerate our strata in life as though biding our time for when our fairy godmother comes waving her magic wand and grants our heart’s desires. What is our heart’s desire?

Stop. Breathe. What do I want?

What do I truly want?

Many a time in my quiet moments recently, I have ben questioning what I should do with my life. Funny how I never seriously considered this question until I left college. I have been on a treadmill, going from one stage to the next for as long as I can remember. There was always a next step. I was that girl who may wander off the path to go pet a cat or look at a flower, but I always knew where I was going, and now… Now it’s open. I’m standing on this platform with doors open and others closed, some that swing wide and narrow at different times –and I don’t know where to go.

I am frantic about paying back student debt and trying to become stable enough to live on my own, struggling to realize my own volition admits the duality of feeling both young and old in a single body. The stress intensified within my mind, churning dark thoughts, and the job that I once enjoyed in college morphed into a cage, crippling my joy and compassion towards others and myself.

I quit my job and retreated into the mountains. I didn’t want to pretend anymore, pretend that customers aren’t rude, that I’m always happy, or that these shoe products really are beneficial to your life. I didn’t want to live to work, or work to live –of which either orientation both sound the same to my ears: Your existence having no other worth than to fuel the society that cycles negativity to the burdened and bedraggled people that live and die within it.

In the Lord of the Rings, when Aragorn questions Eowyn regarding what she fears, she answers, “‘A cage. . . To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.’” Settling to do something that feeds the bills but starves your soul is the same. An infant ceases to cry when there is no one there to care for it. Likewise, our passion dwindles when we do not feed it, and falls forever silent when we snuff it out with other unfulfilling occupations of our time.

Perhaps you are like me. Perhaps you too are struggling with a job that does not sit right with your heart, our perhaps you are caught up in actions that makes your skin crawl and your soul howl. I was stuck in a building not getting any closer to the art and writing which uplifted my demeanor and brought a light into my eyes, and as scary as it sounds, I quit my job for that reason. I realized that I don’t want to survive. Settling can be surviving. Living in a cage, may be considered surviving. I realized that I want to thrive. I don’t want to chase after an end-product that eludes me every time I look up to check how much further I have to go, or like my diploma, falls flat when I at last attain it.

Thriving is being present in the moment, it is stopping to smell the flowers and feel the sun on your skin, it is working without feeling like I was ever working a day in my life.

I don’t want to survive. I don’t want the end-product that says I am worthy. I will enjoy my life while I live it. My dreams are now and though I will struggle, that’s what makes it worthwhile.