7:13 AM - Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2005
A bit of history
I've been lying in bed asking myself, "what came first? The chicken or the egg? For how can you not have a chicken without the egg, or an egg without a chicken?" Since my mind is on the deep side today and I won't have time to put in a meaningful entry, I've decided to pull an entry from my past and place it in here for you to read. It's from my old journal days before I created a Diaryland account. Enjoy! And please note the year so as not to confuse this with my present day life. Thanks.
February 1, 2003 -
Coming Into My OwnI have found my present self, have accepted the person I once was, and look forward to becoming the person I am to be.
I used to have a dream of what the perfect man would look like, how he would treat me, and what our relationship would be like. Every guy that came into my life never lived up to the image I had formed in my mind. It wasn't until this last relationship I was in that I realized I was comparing these men to my father. My dad had always been the prevailing male figure in my life. I was "daddy's little girl," and daddy could do no wrong. When he almost died in a car accident right before my very eyes, it hit me that my father is mortal. He isn't the perfect man and he isn't always going to be around to take care of me. I know now that I can't keep comparing the men that come into my life to him. No man is perfect; no man is immortal; and no man is going to be around in my life forever to take care of me. I have learned that there is beauty in imperfection, that any day one of us can be swept away from this existence, and that we have to learn to take care of ourselves while we have this chance at life.
I once had a dream of the perfect life. I'd grow up, go to college, meet my soul mate, graduate, find a job, and start a family. We would raise our family in Small Town, USA putting our children through Catholic school and letting them live the "American" dream. Then we'd have grandkids who would come visit us every spring and swim in our pool; and they would see us through our hard times brought on by old age until we passed away. Obviously, I've only realized half this dream and it didn't come to pass the way I expected it too. I used to compare my life to the lives of my siblings and friends who have fulfilled this dream. At first, it wasn't such a bad thing. After all, I was young. I had a lot of years left to carry out my intended goal. As the years passed, however, I watched the dream slip away. It depressed me to be around those who had obtained the lifestyle I ached for inside. Then one day it hit me. The dream to attain was not my own. Both sets of my grandparents had married young. My parents had married young. My two older sisters had married young. My friends all married young. I wanted to marry young, too, because it was expected of me. But it wasn't what I wanted; it was what they wanted for me.
Growing up, I never wanted to be a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse. When I went off to college, my parents tried to push me into those careers, telling me I needed to develop skills in order to make a living and survive in the real world. But how do you tell your parents that you had other ambitions, that you didn't want to be stuck in a classroom, behind a desk, or cleaning up after sick people all day? When I was little, they used to tell me that I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be. I believed them, too. When I was five, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I had empathy for all living creatures outside our species. I wanted to save all the animals in the world from the cruelty brought on by the inhumane world we lived in. It filled me with sorrow to see road kill on the street, to imagine a hunter taking the life of a pheasant or deer, or to hear the ongoing stories of endangered species. I wanted to grow up and risk my life to save them all. When I was in high school, I wanted to work for National Geographic taking photos and writing stories about the awesome creatures roaming this planet. It was a dream I held inside of me even after my family laughed in my face and told me it was an impossible dream. I never did tell them that some days I'd dream that I was a world famous gymnast or ballerina; or that when I'd hear a classical song on the radio, I'd imagine I was a concert pianist or violinist. I kept those to myself. If I didn't, what was left to hope for?
As a child I was naive. I never questioned authority. The structure of society was just the way things were. I was happy to accept being told what to believe in and who to be. I ran around in an ignorant bliss never comprehending that I had a mind of my own. When life hit me full force, I was not ready for it. Nobody had prepared me for the hurdles I was to overcome. Having grown up around the same type of people my entire life, I did not have people smarts. Everyone I knew was Catholic and rich, and their lives revolved around the religion and money. I was raised in a secluded neighborhood where any thought of a world beyond it was inconceivable; therefore, I did not have street smarts. And as for book smarts? Well, I spent more time daydreaming in the classroom than paying attention to what the teachers had to tell me. I never studied, and I always put my homework off until the last minute. Somehow the information I needed in order to adapt to the next level of education made it's way into my brain and stayed there. In that regard, I was pretty lucky.
I was a teenager when life finally hit me. I was taken by complete surprise. There was an entire world of people out there. Not everyone was Catholic; not everyone was rich; life didn't revolve itself around one neighborhood; and it didn't appear to matter if I was placed in the higher reading group or that I couldn't figure out how to solve mathematical fractions. Suddenly there were new things to learn, and I wanted to know them all. I wanted to know why the Amish did not believe in electricity nor war, why Buddhists believed in Nirvana and the Four Noble Truths with the Eight Path Fold, and why the Jewish people believed Jesus was just a prophet and not the son of God. I wanted to know how Beethoven composed his Fifth symphony while being blind and deaf, and how Helen Keller managed to overcome her handicaps and communicate effectively with the world around her. I wanted to know how electricity could be trapped inside metal wires, how picking up a phone could connect me to a person thousands of miles away, and how a machine composed of various metals and plastics could create characters on a screen and print them out onto a piece of paper. Yet, no matter how much I went after this knowledge seeking an answer to my question "why?", I always ended up with more questions than answers. It seemed that the amount of information out there was endless. No matter how much of it I collected, I could never gather all of it together. In time, I came to realize I could not know it all and that I would never know it all.
As a teenager, I assumed I knew everything there was to know about life, love, and the pursuit of happiness. I had an answer to everything when it came to these three aspects of life. What I failed to realize was that I knew very little. All of the answers were not my own. They were famous quotes handed down through the ages, life lessons of some other human beings. I had not lived enough to know the true meaning behind these people's words. Instead I assumed that what they had to say was what everyone would say if they shared a similar life experience. It took me a long time to figure out what it meant to "walk in somebody elses shoes," and that even if I did walk in their shoes, it didn't mean that I suddenly had all the answers. I had built my foundation on the experiences of others, never knowing what it was like to truly live them. When I finally started to put up my walls, I started to live my life. Unexpectedly things started to happen. I was hastily forced into the adult world with the mind and insight of a child. All around me was life bursting with positive and negative activity. My eyes opened wide to the picturesque world found in all things beautiful and ugly. I not only wanted to see it all, I wanted to feel it. I dove into the unknown with such intensity that I was not prepared for the fall. And when I fell, everything I thought was real wasn't; everything I thought I knew, I found I didn't; everything I had based my entire existence upon had fallen with me. For a year or two, I stayed there in the rubble wallowing about in self-pity. I had no inclination to pick myself up and carry on. But then one day I grew tired of living in such shambles, so I did the only thing possible to get myself out of them. I picked myself up, and I started to rebuild myself. I broke apart my foundation and started over. It's taken me awhile to build up the walls that surround me again. Sometimes I tear one down and start over. Other times I chip away at the existing wall and mend only what's broken. The good thing is, I'm more than willing to do what I have to do in order to make myself better.
I ended last year in a relationship that I assumed was the real thing. I began this year in the same relationship assuming, once again, that it was the real thing. I expected great things to come from this union of two souls. I hoped for an equal partnership that could withstand the tribulations of time, one that believed in the good of all things no matter what vicissitudes came our way. And although we parted ways and I did not find within him that man, I can say without hesitation that great things did come from our relationship. For the first time in years I had met someone with whom I could connect not only on an emotional level, but a mental and spiritual level, as well. My mind was at peace, my heart was content, and I forgot what it was like to feel sadness. Instead of sorrow filling my vicinity, there emerged a new feeling. It was the feeling of hope. It was the feeling of happiness. I had forgotten what these affections had felt like, and being able to feel them again was the most generous gift anyone could have given me. I am now 25 years old. I have become a better person because of him. Without even trying, he taught me more in two months than what I had ever learned on my own in four years.
I spent the last four years searching for a purpose to this existence. I had spent the years attempting to find meaning in the emotions bottled up within me, seeking to find reason to the emotions I had lost somewhere along the way. As I looked everywhere internally for the object of my desire, the passion that would renew life within me, I placed limitations upon myself the entire time that I spent looking for the answers. I wanted time to surrender to me rather than me surrendering to time. People created limits, the undefined perimeters that bind us from exceeding the edges of our potential. And along with these imaginary borders came the existence of time. I do believe good things come to those who spend their years searching for something they can't find. After all, people all over the world are seeking a reason to their existence, too. If they weren't, would there be such a thing as religion? Would we have created culture if people from the past did not search for more out of this life? Would science exist if we did not seek the answers to ageless questions? I may never create a religion or develop an ageless culture. I may never develop a theory and put it into law. The point is, I now know time was my only enemy because I allowed time to shape and control my life, keeping me from finding the important answers that would hold more significance than the answers to questions I could only hope to find. It seems the more I fought with time, the more time I lost in living. The concept of time will outlive me, as it will every living creature. However, instead of working against it as I have done in the past, letting it define my future, I have decided to work with it. John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans." I have also decided that instead of searching for the purpose to my existence and making plans, I am going to live it.
As for the meaning of life? Well, after the passing of this last relationship, I've come to know that you can't define life by one meaning. To every person, life has it's own definition. To limit the significance of ones existence to only one interpretation is like caging a free bird and snipping it's wings. To say that the meaning of life is happiness takes away from the possibility that life's true meaning is love. To limit life's true meaning to only love denies it the opportunity of being something greater and of dynamic proportions. How can you feel happiness if you have never felt sorrow? How can you know what love is, if you have never known hate? Without every probable explanation coming into play, a person leaves out sectors of life that create not only who we are, but what we are. As we search for the meaning of life and the reason behind our existence, how can we be satisfied if we continue to create boundaries that restrict us from experiencing all possible things?
Is the sky not the limit?
There are many things going on in this life that I'm uncertain of. I don't know what the future has in store for mankind, I don't know if the past is doomed to repeat itself, and I only have an idea of what I'm doing in the present. What I do know for certain is this: the little girl inside of me will always love cherry Popsicles; the adolescent in me will always do what she's told whether she believes in it or not; the teenager in me will fight the system and rebel against authority; while the adult in me is taking on the responsibility of life while still craving a youth that slipped by too quickly. I will never view the world through the eyes of a child again. I will never again be sixteen and experiencing the emotions of my first true love, and I will never again know the freedom that comes from buying my first legal alcoholic drink. I will, however, embrace my future for I am ready for the challenge that comes with experiencing the unknown. I don't expect too much of myself right now, nor do I assume great things will come my way. I do know, however, that I have hope, and I do expect and assume through this hope that the life that awaits me is worth traveling through time for. I have always attempted to live by these rules: 1. no assumptions, and 2. no expectations. However, the more I live, the more I realize that it's impossible (for me) to live life without assuming and expecting things from others and of myself. To not do so would be closing myself off to the possibility of greater things to come. To not do so would be to give up hope, and what would life be like if there was no hope? I want to have hope so that I may dream of a better future; I want to dream, whether my dreams come true or not; and I want to live a long life so that maybe I can see some of my dreams come true.
