Who Am I?

I am about to embark on a slight rant, so please, bare with me...

There is something on my mind that I want to try and articulate as clearly as I can figure. It's this little thing called "life". Life starts out as a single string: simple, headed in a single direction, easy to figure out. As we grow up, our life elaborates on itself: the string begins forming knots on itself, tying to other strings, etc. We meet thousands of people throughout life, from people we only see once, to people who become our very dearest friends. We begin school, we learn about numbers and letters, we learn that there is a whole world out there that is bigger than our little town that we grew up in. We begin feeling new emotions that we had never known existed before, or never recognized. And yet, in the early stages of our lives, all of this little stuff never really means anything because, at the end of the day, we go back home to our families (if we are so blessed to have them), eat dinner, watch some TV, and go to bed. It's simple, because we don't have to worry about the next day, and we don't think about the future beyond what we know is coming. That is the simple beauty of being a child.

Once we reach middle school, everything becomes a crisis. Puberty is the monster that eats up our childhood and starts turning us into little minions of a system created by adults that we never knew. Believe me, I've gone through it, and I came out on the other side. Around this time period is when we begin to understand just how much we are about to have dumped on our plates. We begin thinking about high school, begin worrying about the people that are going to remain in our lives outside of middle school, and we begin wondering bit by bit about the future-at least the next four years. Yet, life is still fairly simple. Sure, there's more homework, and hormones are beginning to drive us crazy with week long crushes and fandoms that turn us into raging emotional machines, but we still have the opportunity to turn back into our child-like selves occasionally, because our future is decided for us at the time. What else do we have to worry about?

Then comes high school. What an adventure! We leave as people drastically different than the people we were when we came in. We grow so much that, sometimes, we have a hard time catching up with ourselves. This is when things start to get messy, especially around the junior or senior year. Our string begins to get so cluttered with connections and knots that we have a difficult time figuring out where we began, reverting back to our roots. And I've realized something: throughout all of this, we begin to become detached from what it all means. We begin worrying about "where am I going to go to college?" and "who are the people I need to know to have a career?" rather than "when is the next time I will see my friend?" or "what did I do today to positively impact someone else's life?" The true trickery begins as soon as we set foot on our college campuses.

Now we don't even know who we are. We go in to school with a major in something we hate half of the time, just because we are told that is the only way we will make any money, or because our parents force us to make that career choice. And the people who choose a major in something that they "love" are truthfully not that much better. We still go to school, meticulously planning every minute of every day in order to optimize our chances of being "successful", and we barely spare any time for the people in our lives outside of academics and job experience. We stop doing things because we want to, or we want to do them for the wrong reason. We quit trying to be happy, and we forget what that word really means. We say we are "happy" when we receive a good grade on a test. We declare our joy when we have time to watch a movie or eat some ice cream in between study breaks. But what does it mean to be actually, truthfully happy? What is it all about?

I guess that is the main reason for this post: what is it all about? Why are we here? Some people live their whole entire lives without reaching a conclusion. Some people think they have the answer, but are never really sure. I personally believe that there can be multiple different reasons for a person's existence, and if we find even one, we are luckier than anyone else in the world.

Is it all about falling in love? Finding that one person that we can love unconditionally, and that will love us back? Some might think so. Is it about helping others to have the lives they deserve but could never reach? Maybe. Is it about some religious struggle, something bigger than ourselves that we can never fully understand? A lot of people would argue "yes". Truth is, I don't know. I don't know that I ever will. At the stage that I am at right now, I am struggling to even find out who I am. What does it mean to be me? What do I stand for? What words come to mind when other people think of me?

Who am I?

I apologize for overloading you with my silly and somewhat irrelevant words, but I just had to get this all out of my brain: it was taking up too much space in there. I never like to end my posts on anything but a positive note, so here is something to consider: maybe our "destinies" and our purpose in life are not completely ours to decide. Remember the string? I would think it would be rather difficult to get all of those knots and ties out on our own. But with the help of others, I would imagine we could eventually revert our string back to it's natural state. With the help of others, maybe we could realize what it all means, and take ourselves back to the beginning. Back to the time when we were first born, and the only things that mattered, were the only things that mattered.

The only things that mattered in life.