Sure, it's a depressing metaphor, but adulthood is depressing. Worse still, everyone likes to either A) Remind me that I have X amount of days until I go back to work, or B) tell me how good I have it and how unfair it is that I have this vacation, which is honestly more burdensome than work is.
When I work, I get to come home and have guilt-free free time. Not so on vacation. I feel so lazy. I feel like I'm wasting it too.
This past week I spent a lengthy amount of time living in the woods. Let me tell you, not all the fun that it's made out to be. You could call it a vacation. I call it an experiment. My foray into pure, unadulterated adulthood. It was...interesting.
I guess I learned a fair amount about who I am. I am indeed ready for adulthood. I'm ready to be responsible and in charge of a situation. This is gonna sound weird. I've been wondering for a few years now when I become a "man." It wasn't the beard that pushed me over the edge. Or the job. Or anything I've done. It was this week. I haven't told anyone this yet, because it feels weird to even say and it'll only bring mockery. I'll settle for telling the faceless internet.
Internet, this week I can honestly say I see myself as a man, not a boy. Don't know if it was the dirt beneath my fingernails or the satisfaction of putting up a tent or spending several days being the sole guardian of another human being. It did it. I'm a man.
There. Got that off my chest.
Now for thoughts I had during my first week of self-proclaimed manhood.
I started reading A Game of Thrones. (Holy Guacomole! Such a good book. I can't speak for the rest of the series, but I imagine they are similarly incredible.) It's the sort of book where not just the story is meant to be consumed, but the very sentences themselves. George R. R. Martin's writing is gorgeous. If anyone sort of skims through that book without properly taking in each sentence in turn, they're missing out.
And this brings me to my grand philosophical point. I'll be a sizzling bit of tire-hugging roadkill if that isn't a good metaphor for life. I want the kind of life worth savoring and I want the patience to savor it. I think it takes effort. Life is all too easy to skim through. We want these milestones, just like some people read books to get to the plot twists and resolution at the end. But it's too easy to miss out on the descriptive sentences in life. Yes, there's high school graduation and marriage and kids and retirement to look forward to in all of our lives. But ultimately? That's a pitiful thing if that's all that matters in the end. I don't want to remember my life like its my obituary. I don't want to be "He liked oranges, writing, and being an all around nuisance." I want to look back on my life and remember the time I belly flopped from ten feet in the air off a rope swing and couldn't breathe for a frightening length of time. I want to remember what it's like to run through a Walmart parking lot as the sky pours down on me. I want my life to not be about events, milestones, and responsibilities. I want to be a collection of laughter, tears, shouting, fears, and liveliness.
I don't know what life holds in store for me. I hardly know what I want from life. I don't know what to think or believe or feel. I know I'm me. I have to go find and be as near to what I love as I can manage. I recognize the folly there. I see how inherently dangerous it is. I know that living life with what you love isn't the safest route to take.
But I no longer see the point in any other life.
