don't ever let life pass you by
On graduation day, everyone gives us pretty little cards and tokens telling us to go out there and live the life we have always imagined. Will we? Will we all make that cut, or must some of us stay behind lest the world become too full of dreamers?
I always liked that cheesy saying about how life isn't a destination, it's a journey. We get our one little cosmic blip of existence, and that's it. We're not going toward anywhere but the end (or, well, whatever you happen to believe). I guess everything you experience, every goal met, is just there to push us on to the next one. And the next and the next.
I have to say that I really do love life. My life, life in general, whatever. I love the crazy, unpredictable, ambiguous nature of it. But that unpredictability is also cause for so much fear. Life is so good right now, but we all know how it can turn. If you told me a year ago that I'd be doing and thinking and feeling all the things I do and think and feel now, I'd probably just laugh. If you told me the same thing TWO years ago, I'd think you were insane.
So what then of living the life we've imagined? I can imagine all kinds of crazy things. Moving to Ireland and spending my days painting and writing books in the green hills. Becoming a photojournalist and traveling all over the world. Getting a job at NASA as an astrobiologist. Or even marine biology, and journeying to the deepest sea or learning all the secrets of the whales. And a million little things in between. Roadtrips and learning to play an instrument or two and meeting amazing people with amazing stories and seeing every corner of this crazy globe and climbing mountains and hiking and standing in the shadow of those trees that are as old as time itself and so many nights spent star gazing and early morning awakenings to watch the sunrise and so many dances through the rain.
If a taste, just a taste of that could be mine...that's all...
But the sad truth of the matter is that life is so unpredictable. We're all taught to dream big at this stage but will it get us anywhere in the end? I'm going to try, damnit, to make that taste of wild dreams real. But none of us really ever know where we are going to end up. I say here's to living the imagined life, the great life. But maybe the secret isn't just to live the life you've always imagined, but simply to live.
I always liked that cheesy saying about how life isn't a destination, it's a journey. We get our one little cosmic blip of existence, and that's it. We're not going toward anywhere but the end (or, well, whatever you happen to believe). I guess everything you experience, every goal met, is just there to push us on to the next one. And the next and the next.
I have to say that I really do love life. My life, life in general, whatever. I love the crazy, unpredictable, ambiguous nature of it. But that unpredictability is also cause for so much fear. Life is so good right now, but we all know how it can turn. If you told me a year ago that I'd be doing and thinking and feeling all the things I do and think and feel now, I'd probably just laugh. If you told me the same thing TWO years ago, I'd think you were insane.
So what then of living the life we've imagined? I can imagine all kinds of crazy things. Moving to Ireland and spending my days painting and writing books in the green hills. Becoming a photojournalist and traveling all over the world. Getting a job at NASA as an astrobiologist. Or even marine biology, and journeying to the deepest sea or learning all the secrets of the whales. And a million little things in between. Roadtrips and learning to play an instrument or two and meeting amazing people with amazing stories and seeing every corner of this crazy globe and climbing mountains and hiking and standing in the shadow of those trees that are as old as time itself and so many nights spent star gazing and early morning awakenings to watch the sunrise and so many dances through the rain.
If a taste, just a taste of that could be mine...that's all...
But the sad truth of the matter is that life is so unpredictable. We're all taught to dream big at this stage but will it get us anywhere in the end? I'm going to try, damnit, to make that taste of wild dreams real. But none of us really ever know where we are going to end up. I say here's to living the imagined life, the great life. But maybe the secret isn't just to live the life you've always imagined, but simply to live.