I admit it. I often feel like I'm sailing without a rudder. I've gone through many ideas about this and I'm realizing more and more that the mind alone is not to be trusted. The mind in combination with the heart in combination with the soul, well, that's another story...
The problem is that somewhere along the way (Yes, I'm about to blame my poor parents because at some point, we have to weave our way through the dysfunctional labyrinth of our childhood so we can find our way to our true selves - not who we were told we were supposed to be) I came to believe in the mind. I've always thought I could think my way through things. If I just got the right book. If maybe I slept with that book by my side. Piles and piles of books of all persuasion but mostly self-help these days. I even had a dream once where I was on the beach of my hometown and the Marquis de Sade was buried in the sand alongside that detective guy from the X-Files. I wanted to uncover the X-Files guy (God forbid I uncover the Marquis de Sade with his insanely ravenous, debaucherous ways. Everything about him screamed out "DANGER!" to me at the time.) I had to choose: this grave or that grave. Which one? I chose and started digging and, of course, it was the Marquis de Sade who began to emerge from the sand. And what did I do? I threw books at him - piles and piles to keep him down, to keep him from coming for me. And this is how I dealt with that ravenous part of myself (because, of course, that's what the Marquis represented.) He was (and probably still is though I feel more integrated now) that part of myself that hungered for everything - sex, adventure, everything and all at once. He is my worldly appetite.
My point of this story is that who tells us who we are and what we are supposed to be doing? What's this idea of "supposed to?" Is it familial? cultural? societal? based on our gender? our age? our race? our sexuality? I'm asking this question rhetorically and, at the same time, looking for answers because I find myself struggling with this question of identity and what in the hell I'm "supposed" to be doing with my life. I dread that question people often ask upon meeting for the first time: "So...what is it that you DO?" How the hell am I "supposed" to answer this question? I do a lot of things but do these things define who I am?
In High School, I was a member of almost every possible organization I could be a member of...was it enough? And then in college, I said "fuck it" and became a kind of academic robot, spitting out papers, taking exams, going through the motions. And then I took my degree and went to Europe and weeded for 4.5 months straight in an attempt to unclog my brain. With each weed I pulled, it was like I was calling my soul back to my body. "Here, here, little soul...it's safe to come back now. Here, I'll give you a treat."
This weeding certainly helped but, somehow, I'm still stuck with this existential question of the purpose of my existence. I'm still waiting for the clouds to part and for God's voice to come streaming down, "Melissa Cardwell, wow, I finally found your file. Sorry it's taken me to get back to you on this one. We have quite a backlog here. Ahem, so, your life's purpose (drum roll) is...." I know. This line of thinking is totally absurd. Completely outrageous. It doesn't make any sense. And somehow, I keep waiting. Come on, God, I know you can do it!
Plan B is this: I wake up, I half walk/am half dragged down the street by my wild dogs, watch them sniff and pee and shit on imaginary things that only they can smell, eat breakfast, stare at the massive amount of weeds on my land that I just can't seem to even begin on, contemplate the meaning of existence while staring at the sky, wonder why I feel this angst when I live in such a beautiful place this feeling quickly followed by guilt about feeling this angst, maybe take a shower, head to work while contemplating my existence, then maybe get a couple bodies to rub which, for some unknown reason, heightens my levels of creativity so that I may pursue all avenues of fantastical thinking which propels me to bust this all out in some form of the written word.
Is it just the human condition to always want more and to never be satisfied with what we already have or is it just me? I'm somehow still at the oral phase only it's more metaphorical these days. I don't necessarily want to stick everything in my mouth but I want to FEEL everything. I want to feel the whole world in my hands. I want to go to India and see life and death on the same corner. I want to drink wine while sitting at random fountains in Rome. I want to help the women of Afghanistan to reclaim their power and educate the men so that they stop cutting off the fucking noses and ears of their wives, I want to sit with the dying and support women who are birthing babies into this world. I want to go to the Pyrenees. I want chickens. I want to bathe naked in rivers and pitch my tent in different forests. I want to be a nomad. I want to live in a sustainable ecovillage. And I want a tipi. Is this too much to ask?
So who am I? What do I do? Well, that is an open-ended question, isn't it?
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3 comments:
I like wanting more than having; but I suppose not-wanting is better still. Sometimes, I find in moments I do not want at all: thus want for nothing. And I think it's enough, that. Do you think the existential nothingness and the Zen nothingness are the same? I suppose the ironic part about the Key Club in high school was that it really wasn't a key to anything at all; or have we just not found the right lock yet? Maybe the keys were/are all the people we meet; we hold on to them like totems in times of trouble. I want to collect keys without worrying about the locks that fit them. I want just the keys to be enough. (Or is that just all, all-too phallocentric of me, to speak of all keys and no locks?)
Well, Anonymous, (though, really, I know who you are but I promise never to reveal...) you have asked some very valuable and poignant questions which, indeed, I take to heart. Firstly, I do not think that existential nothingness and Zen nothingness are the same. It seems to me that Zen nothingness doesn't have the same angst-like quality whereas existential nothingness has a sort of nihilist quality. Help me out here, oh literary one. I am thinking of Sartre's The Stranger, which, if I remember correctly, was quite dark. The Zen nothingness seems more light and airy to me. They are more accepting of the nothingness...
Having keys with no locks....well, then wouldn't that make the key obsolete? Or maybe not. Is a key enough on its own without a lock? It's identity seems precarious at best if it has no lock to open. Then again, perhaps the key is the mystery and best left on its own so one may explore one's own lock so to speak. Hmmmm, you have left me with only more questions to ponder....
Wanting vs Having: Do we only want because we realize that the having could never match our wanting fantasies? So we go on wanting in fantasyland never having...or do we commit to seeing the miraculous in the everyday?
The life is made by fantasy of all kinds, and if you go towards the realization of this fantasy, you will have many disappointments of it, know it, you represent for him only the distant image,only a flowery and nice-smelling shadow, a flavor moreover who represent nothing concrete or of practicable and the shade of a cauchemard also respites thus to believe that he thinks of you, or dream of you, his life is somewhere else
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