Done

I want to come at the world with wisdom. Now that I've got (yet) another year of higher education under my belt, I want to speak thoughtfully and carefully and do that slow and steady work of changing minds and hearts through information and thought structures (because that's how I change my heart and mind). I want to be so zen about everything and be willing to let people make the mistakes they need to make because at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, I've seen most of all there is to see and I know most of the kinds of problems people will face and I know things. I also know that I don't know anything close to one percent of all the things there are to know and that the ripe old age of twenty-eight is just as young and naïve as seventeen was, but the point is that I want to rest confident in the knowledge that I have and proceed with the strength that Knowing How to Learn gives you.

I also want to come at the world with emotion, with openness and vulnerability. I want to see people, to get to know them, to open up the parts of my heart and soul that I've squirreled away, not unlike Gollum, hidden in a deep and dark cave for fear that what I hold precious will be stolen. As a spoiler alert for those who cling to their deepest selves, retreating through tunnels and caverns to the places that they hide from the light, what you've got is not so bad or so important. I mean, it is. It matters a whole lot to you, which means that it matters. But you will find, when you bring the hidden things out into the light, that other humans, humans you know, have hidden the same kinds of things away, sequestered similar parts of their souls, and even though your secrecy is fundamental to you right now, your deepest darkest secrets are much easier to handle in the daylight, where the very real shadows they cast are better defined. This is a horrifying thought. Emotions are scary and squishy and problematic and terrifying. I've also been told they're important, so I want my world to include them.

I want to know everything.

I want to know nothing.

I want to have a solution.

I want to still be figuring things out.

I want everything to make sense.

I want to be comfortable with paradox.

I want to be able to say the exact right thing.

I want to be able to sit in silence and to express my confusion as needed.

I want to be hopeful.

We have been living in the opposite of hope. We are breathing in a low level of stress every day, brought about by the uncertainty of tomorrow, the worry over stability that we're all experiencing in some way or other. I know that the stress that I've been feeling has been related to the seven classes and two jobs and the strain on relationships and pages upon pages of writing and reading that I've been needing to do, but I also know that there's something beyond those localized concerns, a global rumbling that breaks through to the surface more frequently than it should. And I have these big bold questions and I've experienced so many life-giving things over the past year and I want to reflect on all of that, but there are bigger, bolder questions that need to be asked about who we want to be as a people, as nations, as a world, and how we want to be led and what kind of dream for society we want hold and what narratives we want to pursue. Does the circle grow ever wider? Do we trust that expansion of heart as the norm for humanity? Or do we believe in the swings from acceptance to isolation and back to acceptance? Is there a purpose or goal to be found at all in this existence we're all presumably participating in?

I'm coming down off a mountain of sleep deprivation and caffeine, so who knows how I'll really settle with any of these thoughts. I'm processing an eye-opening year in terms of the importance of friendships and relationships and just people in general and who knows how that will impact how I see the world around me. The stress since November has stretched time, tricked me into counting days like I should have counted weeks, and every action seems more significant now, like a twitch in the fabric that could one day form a galaxy. I know that can't be right, that on the whole each decade in humanity has felt to those who lived it like the most significant while that's just not statistically possible, but when life proceeds at a breakneck pace, every breath feels important. It's hard to get any kind of distance to see what's really going on.

I feel more at peace. I feel more right.

I just thought I'd feel calmer than this.