On the Edge

[earthrise]

I have an inclination to read On the Road, since I've never read it and it's the 50th anniversary of publication. But I'm also worried about what it will do to me if I do read it.

David Brooks' op-ed about the hyper-professionalism of Western life at all ages neatly sums up what I've been raised to see as success -- education and more education

Comments

[snuggly_llama]

I'd join you, but I'm much too busy keeping my head down and my nose clean.

[earthrise]

This was not meant to be a slight to the professional, just in case that wasn't clear. Eek.

[snuggly_llama]

Not at all taken, I mean it ironically ;). I've definitely sipped the Kool-aid of stressed-out, authority-worshiping, don't-step-on-the-grass or color-outside-the-linesness that I've been inculcated with since preK. Maybe I need some time with Jack K on the road.

[earthrise]

Remember Fry's? I'd never seen a self-service checkout before going there for the first time.

Electronic voice: "Thank you for shopping at FRY'S!"

[sheeniebeanie]

I tried to read On the Road but couldn't get past the second page. I should try again.

I'm not sure I understand what will happen to you if you read it. Do you feel like you should leave where you are? I have many theories on this, which will not manifest themselves in an LJ comment when I have pressing work. But know that I miss you and I hope things are going well.

[earthrise]

There's always the curiosity of what else is out there. So many of my friends (nudge nudge) are going to grad school or weighing their academic options or are climbing the corporate ladder or settling for the career they seem to have fallen into.

I have no friends who are Leaving, really; not leaving the track that we've all been primed to follow in one way or another. Nobody has run off to work on kibbutz for a year then traveled from organic farm to organic farm doing odd jobs in between, or anything similar that could be construed as irresponsible to the majority of society.

I can't say I haven't had dreams of throwing everything into a career in the National Park Service -- but even that is a Career, in a government organization with its own acronym.

Now I'm rambling in an LJ comment. I do want to hear your theories at some point, in whatever format they manifest themselves.

[sheeniebeanie]

Okay: one of my theories is that if you're anything like me, it's not so much that you don't like where you are as you want to be several places at one time. While I am always curious about what else is out there, the older I get the more I crave the trappings of a stable adult life - a partner, a home (with real adult furniture and a piano), a sense that I'm creating something to contribute to society, whether it's a book or a non-profit or whever I find myself working at the same time I'm simply working enough to support a family when it comes time for that.

There are a lot of facets to what I want in life, and as a result I'm always doing what I want to be doing (grad school, moving away from New York) but at the same time I always wish I was somewhere else (New York, Puerto Rico). But I trust I am on the way to finding a balance and realizing that I will never ever be able to be two places at once.

[grapefruiteater]

I can really relate to all of this.

I used to be very focused on the next thing. I wanted to rush through what I was doing or where I was to get to what was coming up next. I had a big realization about how much I was missing by thinking that way during the semester I was in Dublin, and I started to move away from that outlook. Sometimes it still sneaks up on me, but I find it easier to focus on where I am and what I'm doing NOW than I used to.

[howdoyousolve]

I read it in Arizona and it didn't change anything. To me, it was about going and being not in the right place at the right time, but being, right now, in the best place you knew how.

I would be more worried about reading The Drifters.

Any chance they need two tourguides?

[earthrise]

See, I think (and mind you this is having not yet read it) that reading the book in Arizona wouldn't have been as altering because it was exactly that -- being in the best place you know how.

It's now, being in New York City, in the right place and the right time to all outward appearances, that I think reading something like this might make a huge difference.

Of course, I could read it and go "eh." It's a crapshoot, one that I could eliminate by not reading it at all. But that's pretty safe and boring. Right.

[earthrise]

Also, my left eye teared up just a little when I read "Arizona" and "being, right now, in the best place you know how" in the same breath.

So far part of me thinks that was the one offbeat thing I ever did, and even that was sanctioned by Columbia University.

I guess I should read the book before I think about this further.

[howdoyousolve]

I understand wanting to be part of the famous revolutionary idea that is tied up in American history.

George Washington, Lewis and Clark, Orville Wright, Jesse James, Elvis, Martin Luther King... all those guy have made America great by doing something out of the ordinary. But then again, no one talks so much about the guys who made America great by staying the course and working hard: Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, the entire country during WWII, Neil Armstrong.

I think you're in good company either way.

[pennyfore]

Actually, "On the Road" is on my short list of "to-reads", too. All the more reason, perhaps, to pick it up next.

And tangentially related, I guess: http://www.quarterlifecrisis.com/

[earthrise]

I vaguely recall being invited to a quarter life crisis seminar or soemthing at Barnard once. I can't even remember if I went.

I feel as if planning a life-crisis is somehow wrong.

[onefishonly]

They just released "On the Road: The Original Scroll," which is the original draft of the thing, as straight memoir, no names changed and fewer self-consciously literary parts added. I wonder how that reading experience would compare to reading the original. I've read neither, yet. The original has become the classic, but my intuition says this particular book might have been better - or purer, whatever - in rough.

[earthrise]

That is fascinating. It's like Kerouac on LJ omg.