Confessionals for a new year.
Twenty-two seems to me a far more tender age then I’ll remember when looking back on the best years of my life. I’ve just finished college, the ultimate preparation for the future. Everything until very nearly the date of graduation seemed focused on doing my best in an academic sense. You take a test and get good grades so you can pay thousands of dollars to go to the best possible prep school. You do well there so you can get to the best possible college. All these things give you the best possible prospects for your future, for your life. But, all of a sudden you graduate, and you’re caught between the before that was college and the after that is the rest of your life, the bit you’ve been preparing for, the part that now stretches before you like a vast web of unmarked paths. C’mon, with all that potential, that quickness of mind, that willingness of spirit, that $160,000 degree from that wonderfully fancy school, all you’ve got to do is choose, put your mind to it, and you can achieve anything. But, what do you want to achieve? And perhaps now, the question is becoming a little less, what if you fail, but what if you never try? What if you never make a decision, nothing ever grabs you or you never let it?
Rather than being crushed by the weight of my own amorphous expectations, I have to just begin. Take it a step at a time, as my mother says, almost on repeat, for nearly every situation. So, I’m here, in Spain, letting life teach me, trying to learn how to drink a new knowledge from life, one whose responses aren’t multiple-choice or the difference between this small liberal arts college in Rhode Island and that one in New York. I’m here to quit looking the gift horse in the mouth, and just get on the damn thing.
So, as I look for my passions and “answers,” which have decided to not ceremoniously present themselves immediately upon the completion of school or my arrival in a foreign land, I share with you a song that I feel best encompasses some of the feelings of this time of life.
Jamie Cullum, "Twentysomething"
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In 1492, Isabella I of Castille, Queen of Castille and León from 1474 to 1504, signed the Alhambra Decree with her husband and co-Catholic Monarch, Ferdinand II. It ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the Kingdom of Spain. Sorry Izzy. Folks, this is my year in Málaga.
1 comment:
I had a really wonderful conversation with a new friend here in Southern California about this same thing. She was one of those alumni I reached out to on the Brown network, trying very hard to hide my desperation for a job, validation, maybe even just a clue in my email. We met in Long Beach at this place called the Coffee Cup Cafe. And, Rashi, who is only 3 years older and wiser than me had some fantastic advice. "This is funny," she told me, "because while you are in the post-college fuck-what-is-the-next-step stage, I am here in the fuck-i've-worked-at-my-post-college-job-for-two-years-but-don't-want-to-go-to-grad-schol-either stage. And its sort of similar. Except that there is one thing I know this time around, and that is what I want to pass on to you. Julie, you are in a dark tunnel. True. But let me tell you, I've been in this tunnel for 3 years already, and trust me, there are NO BATS in here. I mean, there aren't any leaky pipes, oversized rodents, of fatal fungi. Its just dark. And, all you have to do is keep walking and listening. Some people can't even get themselves to enter the tunnel. You're doing pretty well already. Just walk slowly, and don't expect to see light at the end anytime soon. This dark tunnel is kind of warm and nice once you get used to it."
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