When I was in high school, I was constantly asked "Where are you going to college?"
When I was in my first year or two of college, I was constantly asked "What is your major?"
In my later half at college, I was constantly asked "What are you going to do with a degree in English?"
As I finished college, I was constantly asked "So where are you going to work?"
I understand that these are well-meaning questions. The intention is to ensure that I'm following some practical life path and making good decisions. The problem is, I don't believe these are good decisions for me.
As I interpret it, many people consider a practical life path to be one in which I make plenty of money, however much money that might be. In which I work a respectable, upper-middle class job in an office decorated with photos of friends, family and my kids' art. My hours are 9 to 5 or maybe 8 to 4. I come home to my nice house in the suburbs and make pot roast for dinner. I have 2.5 kids who play soccer and get straight As and Bs. I have a sweet golden retriever who we take on walks at the neighborhood dog park. On weekends, I go to Pottery Barn and buy nice things and invite my friends over for some BBQ. I'm moderately Republican but I usually keep my opinions to myself.
I don't really think there is anything wrong with this path. I am not belittling the people who follow and appreciate it. However, I think it's wrong to assume that this is the path to happiness for me. In fact, the thought of living this entirely wholesome and astounding normal life makes me feel a little uncomfortable, as if I have to break out of my skin and run away from the idea. This is not the life I imagined when I was 8 years old.
I'm not employed right now, therefore, my life now revolves around jobs. Probably more than yours does. And I don't like it at all. The importance of a "good" job has never been more obvious to me now that I can't pay off my student loans, now that I can't contribute to rent, now that I can't go shopping and buy new clothes and shoes so that I may be totally fashionable and cool.
But more importantly, the absence of a job, and my obsession over finding the "perfect" one, means that I am pushing my life in a direction that I don't want it to go. I am forgetting what is important to me. I feel like I am slowly selling out to the "American Dream," but this dream was never mine. And I'm not sure how I got here.
When I was younger, perhaps about 8 years old, I came across a few polaroids of the Nevada desert. I grew up in Western New York farm country, a rolling green valley (well, maybe not so green in February) studded with the scent of lilacs, apples and manure. The desert was as foreign to me as it got. I could not imagine a sky so blue or a landscape so red, so dry, so void of the scars of commercialization and suburbanization.
And I wanted nothing more than to experience that place.
As I grew older, the foreign world unfolded around by the way of food. I moved away from my little farm world in New York, full of pizza, subs and fast food chains, and found myself in Florida, a hot, humid, flat land with sugary-white beaches (at least on my portion of the state) and a marginally more diverse population. I had the chance to try new cuisines, a la Epcot at Disney World, and I still remember the first time I had sushi. From there on out, with the memory of that Nevada desert in mind, Trying New Things was my goal in life. Sushi, this (sometimes) raw fish dish (which, at the time, had not gained sweeping popularity in the US and therefore was still considered weird and unusual) turned out to be absolutely wonderful - what more "weird" stuff did the world have to offer?
Meanwhile, I began to travel more, to places other than beaches. I went to New Orleans and wanted to sob with joy over how the beignets exceeded my expectations. I went Chicago and shared a giant Russian dinner with my mother and sister. In Atlanta, Thai food melted my heart. In Washington DC, I was surprised by Ethiopian. I had Italian food in Italy and wandered an outdoor market in Switzerland - and then was peer-pressure by my group to go to McDonalds.
But it wasn't just the food. These places were new. Where the beauty of Western New York had numbed me, these places warmed me back up. The snow-capped mountains of Switzerland and Washington State were alien, and breathtaking, to me - the biggest "mountains" I'd ever seen were in Pennsylvania, and those are really just giant hills. There I stood, tiny, insignificant, in the shadow of these giants, who existed long before me and would remain long after my ashed were absorbed back into the Earth.
And then there was the desert in Washington State, not nearly as spectacular as the desert in the polaraid, but still just as lovely. I woke up early one morning from frigid, shivering sleep to to climb canyon walls before the sun had the chance to lift up over the horizon and, from there, watched the coyotes howl to the day to come.
These were lonely places where I could be myself. There were no signs of people, no office parks or shopping malls, no stop signs, no cell towers. Trees and sand and bird song, fresh air and more stars than you could ever count. I was no one and it was okay.
And yet, from all the exploring I've attempted to while I'm young and able, for all I've hoped to see, I have hardly seen a thing. All I can do is sit and surf through travel websites, flip through glossy magazines or whine at travel shows and nature documentaries. This is what I've become. For me, it's not a small world after all - the world is large and out of reach and I fear I will never experience it.
I don't need to be a super hero or a millionaire. I don't need a fancy house, a nice car, or the cushy desk job. I need to go places. I need to see it. I need to go to Cappadocia, to Arches National Park, I need to see Tokyo and Mount Fuji, the jungles of Cambodia. There is so much to China that I could spend years there and never feel satisfied. I must go to Peru and see the city in the clouds, I want to go to New Zealand and just soak it all in, and then hop on a plane to Iceland and watch the tectonic plates drift apart. I want to see Gaudi's magical buildings, to drive through America's Heartland and stop for a burger, and then escape it all in Patagonia.
I feel happiest when I'm not at home. No, scratch that. I am happy to be with the people I love. I love my family and friends and their company means the world to me. But I am most alive, most myself, and I don't feel lost, when I am not at home. I am not awkward or unsure. I feel comfortable. I feel like "This is exactly what I was meant to be doing at this moment, this is where I should be." I don't need a career-oriented title or have an impressive answer to "What do you do?" I see, I wander, I try new things. That is what I do.
I have never been certain about "what I want to do with my life." When people ask that question, they really mean "What job do you want?" I don't know what job I want. I truly don't. I am sorry that at 24 years old, I still don't have an answer. Please stop asking, I'm tired of lying or making stuff up.
It makes me sad to be trapped here in the city, in the suburbs, to know the world is out there, confined by my lack of money and obsession with following the perfect career path. It makes me sad that you never asked what makes me happy. You just made me feel bad that I didn't have the job, that I didn't study the right thing in school, that I don't have the money to buy the things "I need." I need to pay off my loans, I need to contribute to our living expenses and I need to save every other penny. That's it. I don't need an iPhone, I don't need the finest china, or designer jeans.
The world is bigger than who I am.
