Cadence

Figuring out where you belong is an odd thing. 

We live in a world where many people can see outside of their hometown with ease. We know that there is an entire globe of new places out there, beyond the city limits of the place you grew up. So for people who don’t want to stay in the place where they started their life, they know that there are options. There are other places to be. You just have to get there, through varying degrees of difficulty.

Many of us go through school finding friends at our school or in our neighborhood or on our sports teams or any other of the dozens of extracurriculars we try throughout our life. We find a group in high school (or we don’t) of friends who have similar interests to us. Sometimes we keep those through college. Sometimes we reinvent ourselves. Sometimes we find friends at work or… I don’t know how you meet people if it’s not through an activity, actually. 

But how do you know what your interests are and how to do you serve those interests as they change? You are constantly becoming the person you will be and I wouldn’t want to go back to anyone I was in the past. I’ve come far. I’m happy with myself as I am right now. The changes haven’t been dramatic, but now that I know who I am, how do I know where to be? 

Do you listen to your gut, which is influenced by how much you ate that day and how you’re feeling that week and how much sunshine you’ve seen recently? Do you listen to your brain, knowing that the logical choice may not be the choice that makes you happiest? Do you pursue happiness? When do you take momentary sadness for the greater good, for your greater good? I pride myself on practicality, but I know that my practicality is cushioned by my feelings, my hopes, and my dreams. 

Amelia Earhart once said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.” But this was said to be heard by the people who have the privilege of following their dreams, who have the luxury of time and education and the feeding of their desires. I do feel as if I can do anything I decide to do. So how do I decide what to do? 

I don’t want to limit myself, to disavow myself of a privilege because others don’t have it. I’d rather use my privilege to help build a world where everyone has that privilege, where everyone has a chance to do anything they decide to do. But those are just words and I don’t know how to shape those words into actions. I don’t know how to turn anything I’d want to do into something that actively improves the world and the situations of the people in it. And I can’t settle, I can’t decide where to be until I know that I’m helping. I am restless with the guilt of my station. 

I know what I’m doing next. I know where I’m going. I’m confident in that. I will pursue a degree with tenacity, and after that jobs, and after that, a career that is helpful, but I feel the need to pause, to take a rest, before I dive in. I need this beat to view the course. Is this what I want? Is this what I should be doing? Why? 

I wish there was a process for this, a checklist that I could run down and answer with honesty and clarity, that will point out my blindspots and assuage my doubts. I want to know what I don’t know and I want to address those things. But it’s just life. This is how we do things. This is how we carry forward. And I can only hope that at the end of this road, I will find a settled place, somewhere I know I can belong.

To 2015

I’ve been thinking about this past year. I’ve been thinking about memories and how they change over time. I’ve been thinking about spaces and how they hold onto ideas you never wanted them to have. I’ve been thinking about events and arcs and other people’s stories, real and imagined. I’ve been thinking about 2014 and what it will mean over the course of the rest of my life. 

It was quite the year for me, for my friendships and my family and my future. I realized exactly how much each of those things can mean, and how much each of them can hurt you, and how helpful each can be in your life. You get to decide, you know? You’re not just a ship tossed about by waves. You have a rudder. You have a compass. You can find a map. 

In maybe February or March or April, I read the Dear Sugar advice column #64: Tiny Beautiful Things. Even though the column has much that I can’t relate to, I can’t get the image of purple balloons out of my head and the wisdom in remembering that you do still have a right to such tiny beautiful things. Situations may take you a plethora of places that you didn’t want to ever be and didn’t realize you should have steered away from, but no matter how far away you are from what you thought was good, you still deserve good things. Like forgiveness. And love. 

In May, I listened to The Debate, one of Welcome to Night Vale’s live shows, in a blanket fort I made in a hotel and I napped in the afternoon sunshine, basking in this current definition of my life. Night Vale relishes the weird, the odd, the creeping scary stories that we’d tell around campfires if we weren’t so afraid of the night and I love that. There is a robust fragility to humanity and I am perpetually reminded of that fragility and that strength in me when I listen to these stories. It is a twice-monthly brightening of my life, something to pull me out of where I’ve been, over and over again. 

In June, July, and August, I had a weekly two-and-a-half hour meeting with Interstate 40, east then a few days later, west, between North Carolina exits 266 and 123. My life arrived at the point where I no longer considered the drive a road to be travelled but a location at which I found myself for five hours in a week. Maybe the vehicle or the music changed, but the feeling was the same. It was an isolation of space from location, the same thing that I felt at my last Avett Brothers New Year’s Eve last night. We might change venues and the people around me may be different, but this feeling, this sensation, it’s the same. I know how it feels to be here, even though the coordinates of here have changed. 

In August and September and October and November, I thought about the person I wanted to represent myself as being and I wrote that person down and I hid the doubts and the lack of confidence in my plans, as one does when one is desperately trying to change one’s situation, and in December, I did my best to figure out what you do with yourself once your most unreasonable dreams have been realized. 

In general, 2014 wasn’t stellar. It was an exercise in getting by, in succeeding with the resources you have available to you and hoping that those resources and your wit/skill/gumption will carry the day. And that getting by, that doing my best with what I had, that went on for so long, I forgot what it was like to just live. To just exist. To have enough and not to feel stretched or squeezed by existence. 

I’ve got some clarity back, some space and some time, and I remember what it’s like to live your life, and how it’s different from getting by. I want to keep this feeling. I know there will be highs and lows, times of plenty and times of difficulty, times of renewal and times of giving. I’ve seen the difference between faking it ’til you make it and actually having the skill and energy and ability to move forward without being shattered into a million pieces. I know the difference between trying (when trying is all you have) and performing. 

I much prefer performing. 

So here’s to a year when we don’t just get by, but we live.

Here’s to a year when circumstances allow us to do our best instead of to try our hardest. 

Here’s to a year when, if again circumstance breaks us down, the people around us catch us with the grace and competence given them. 

Here’s to 2015.