Life Without a Crystal Ball...

I don't expect everyone to understand my choices. I would find it strange if everybody everywhere I went nodded and smiled and agreed that throughout my entire life I had done the exact right thing for myself. I'm not naive enough to pretend that everything I do is right for me. But I sometimes wonder if perhaps I'm not getting the same rights to make mistakes that other people do.

As usual I'm not going to give out any specific information about why I think the things I do (sneaky hey, making myself what amounts to an online journal then never giving anything away. You'll need your crystal ball to learn to read between the lines with me around!). But I hope my points remain as valid to your mind as the most long and convoluted explanation I could ask you to endure (I've been told my stories go on forever) would uphold my opinions.

I do not have a crystal ball. I can't see into the future, and although I would of course hope that it might live up to my expectations, after years of falling asleep hoping maybe tomorrow would be better, I want now to be better. I want to take all those old cliches about living each moment, living for now not tomorrow, not worrying about the past or the future because neither exist in the here and now. "Carpe diem, boys! Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary!" (Dead Poets Society is one of my alltime favourite movies. That and the Rocky Horror Picture Show; which incidentally are both about opening yourself to the possibilities of the present and squeezing as much life out of each moment as possible... "give yourself over to absolute pleasure...don't dream it, be it..." ....sorry, where was I?)

I think everybody has this vague idea when they're very young that once they get past a certain age their worst problems will disappear: no school, no teachers, no homework, no cleaning your room, no curfews, no limits. The pessimists amongst us may comment drily that they are replaced by problems that never go away: boring jobs, annoying bosses, nagging spouses, endless housework, bills to pay, don't even mention having kids, responsibility responsibility r.e.s.p.o.n.s.i.b.i.l.i.t.y.

I thrive on responsbility. I'm probably not at the stage where I can take on all the world's problems, but I love looking at things that are mine to take care of and knowing that I can. Simple things, like cleaning my goldfish's tank or doing the washing. Silly I know. But sometimes I get advice on how to do the most simple things that I consider mine. And I wonder: when does either the fun bit or the boring bit of life begin? Because I'm 22 years old and supposed to be in the process of discovering one thing or another, and all I find is shadows.

I repeat: I do not have a crystal ball. A few years ago I thought that it probably wasn't worth worrying whether the future would be good or not, what mattered was making decisions based on the present. Then I convinced myself that it was not wise to make the decisions I was making then based on the present of the time. And I'm glad I did that. Now I think: choices are made by looking at facts which are admittedly affected by personal opinion (but choices will be affected by personal opinion too, and you're allowed to do maths like that, do the same process on both sides of the equation). So if the facts say, "Excuse me, you are currently not living in the moment and we'd like you to remedy this situation, thankyou for your cooperation", do I expend my time, energy and resources on building a dodgy castle of dreams now, or save and hold out hope that the real thing comes my way if I just keep going the way things go...?

(This piece I think was far too practical for my liking, it must be because it's too late for me to be up on a school night and I spent the evening in a laundromat inhaling a mixture of laundry products (unintentionally of course, please give me some credit and credence in this matter). Hence, I promise to be more obscure next time, and leave you more scope for reading between the lines.)

Happily, to be continued...