I’m supposed to be leaving for class in a few minutes, but I still have not made up my mind about whether or not I’m going to go. It’s hard for me to make up my mind about many things these past few days. I am constantly moving forward, sucking in as many experiences as I can but not really reflecting. I don’t know why I feel that is so wrong. I have spent my entire life contemplating about life, always deciding that I needed to be a better person and never really just being pleased. I am always waiting for my life to begin. Right now I feel like I cannot even breathe the way I want until I graduate. There are too many weights on my shoulder until then. I am also feeling like I am trapped in a cell that I’ve created from my own fears. I cannot express myself the way I want.
This weekend I saw New York City for the first time. I was actually disappointed in how simple and sad it was. How pretentious it felt because of its fame but never once stopping to think about the impact it actually had on the lives of people who existed outside of it. From New York City’s point of view, there is no world outside of New York City. And that kind of pissed me off. The buildings were not so tall, Central Park was not so grand, the people were no more profound than the people I know who come from “no where”.
Still, I am adding more experiences to my life. I am fluffing it out, making it fatter with memories and adventures. I realized that I have done things that no one has ever done. I think it hit me when I stood before Van Gogh’s Starry Night and thought to myself, “he actually touched that canvas. This is it. It is real. It is not fiction.”
You see, I believe everything is fiction until I experience it for myself. That way the world, someplace originally so small for me, is expanding and growing and I am the one making the decisions to expand it. I don’t even think 9/11 was real to me until this weekend.
I was once told by someone that as you grow older you begin to realize your own insignificance, that you recognize yourself as only a speck on the gigantic shelf of the universe. But I have discovered it is not that way. As I grow older and I learn and I reflect and I act, I feel even more significant. I feel as if my being is expanding. As I go out into the world I become more apart of it, and the world becomes more apart of me.
1 Comment
March 4, 2010 at 11:23 am
Hi, new reader here. I just found your blog and have been going back and reading your older posts and I have to say I really love your writing (I’m a writer as well).
But I had to comment about NYC. My ideas about New York as a child were formed from television and movies. I thought everyone in New York was a drug dealer\criminal or a cop. Then Sex and the City came out and I thought all the women, (all the people really) were rich and beautiful and lived like that. Then I went there for myself and it wasn’t like anything I imagined. There were people with money, but that wasn’t everyone. Some parts of the city were dirty and nasty and some parts were beautiful just like any city. My favorite cities in the world are Paris and Berlin, so I can say that I love big cities, really love them, but NY left me feeling…blah. Then I met my fiancée whose from Brooklyn and I went to Brooklyn with him and found that parts of Brooklyn were exactly like I thought New York was supposed to be, and other parts were amazing. That’s where you’ll find the small independent stores and coffee shops and book shops. Now I’m hooked. Now I love Brooklyn and while I love the museums of Manhattan I could care less about the rest of that part of NYC. So try it again sometime and visit Brooklyn. Oh and good luck with Columbia-my fiancée is a graduate and he loved every minute of it.