Common Considerations

afterthoughts

Friday,May 2, 2008 at 5:31 pm (Barnard Year 2 Semester 2)

my last entry was so culminating, it feels odd to return to write, while i still sit here ten stories up in my new york life. but today marked the end of something big, and its worth writing down. Today was my last day of attending an undergraduate class. I am no longer tethered by the idea of earning my degree with attendance in a classroom. For all its good and bad, i am so damn free.

I am twenty, and the future is mine for the making. I have learned so much about myself being here, and being a student, and being in college, and yet the biggest most overwhelming truth I have discovered is that there is no such thing as truth. Nobody has it right, there’s no one correct way to live, and for however dogmatic or open one is, there is never anyway to know what is the right. Instead of believing in how things should be or are, being completely unassuming and open is the only way to feel fearless.

I think this is growth. My left wing beliefs and rejection of the material and consumptive remain, but dogmatism has melted into something more tolerant, something more giving to the possibility that happiness is only how you look at things, and clinging to a certain sense of what is right is only bound to dissapoint you.

Yes, this is what i’ve been trying to get at for so long. Like religion, sureness in a “way to be” accomplishes temporary confidence and trust, but inevitably leads you down the path of uncertainty once again when the mandates of the belief system let you down and you lose your faith. There is also the consistency of guilt and fear: but what if I am not what I believe to be right? Then who am I and what do I deserve? The crisis ensues…fear. confusion. its okay. its all okay, the shit and the glory and the fire and rain. its okay with me.

my roomates just returned, time to transport myself out of this mind suspension. more soon.