"I Don't Know "
It is New Year's Eve. 10:35 PM, and I sit in my bedroom in my first apartment paid for by my first job during my first experience with independence. 1993's on its way out the door. Under two hours left. Feels like a natural time to reflect. I guess this sort of thing happens during the eve of transition.
I graduated in '93 -- with honors even. Pretty fair accomplishment some people would think. Technically, I am now more educated than over 80% of America and probably 90% of the world. Didn't feel like it though. I know I could have tried harder. I know I could have learned more. Read more. Did more. Experienced more. I really don't remember much. Just a four year blur with a lot of growing up. I guess that's where the real education happened. Much of the facts were trivial anyway. But in those four years I learned a lot about myself, about other people, and about the world. And in those four years I learned something that consumes my mind tonight. There is a whole lot out there I just don't know.
I don't know.
No other words can illustrate my emotional, mental and physical state at 22 more accurately. I don't know. When I was 17, I knew all and was completely indestructible. I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts you felt the same way. Yet, I can honestly say that now I know so little sometimes it frightens me.
I don't know how to ski, surf, ride a motorcycle, ride a horse, skydive, scuba dive, ball room dance, fence, hit a baseball into right field, dribble a basketball between my legs, speed read, or even use half the programs on this damn computer I don't know how to pay off. I have never seen Canada, Africa, Europe, Seattle, Portland, Maine, Alaska, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Malibu, Lake Havasu, Disneyland, or a million other places I would very much like to see. And I have never been in love.
I have never read anything by Dickens, or Tolstoy, or Poe, and not once have I ever picked up a biography. I have never seen a ballet, a Broadway play, or an art museum. I often hear these are things very much worth doing.
These are just the little issues I have yet to consider, challenges I haven't tackled, and questions remaining unanswered. Some would say they're trivial--minor details. Still, they exist. And, still, I don't know.
But what about the big questions? I market chemistry software. Do I know how to do this? Not really. I just do my best and hope the profits keep rolling in. Will I do this for the rest of my life. No way. What do I really want to do? Who do I really want to be? I don't know.
Will I ever obtain my dreams, my hopes and my goals? I don't know. Are they even worth acquiring or are they just the passing fancy of a mind known to be more than fickle? I don't know.
Have I made the right decisions? How am I affecting my future? Am I truly in control of my destiny? At the sunset of my life will I look back and smile or close my eyes to the past and weep? I don't know.
Quite a bit to fathom. Quite a measure to learn. Quite a life to live, to see, to experience. Twenty two years on this rock, and I haven't seen or learned or touched or tasted or tried or known or loved a trillionth of what is and was. But at the close of 1993, I do know more than I did in 1992.
Happy New Year. It's 1994.
Afterthoughts:
1/8/94. I look over this entry into my pseudo journal. Makes sense to me. I understand how I felt on that eve of the new year. But, in retrospect, it appears a bit selfish. On the eighth day of 94, here is what I know:
I know where I work. I know where I stand. I know I have a family who loves me, a body that works, and a home in which I sleep. I know where to find food for another day, how to pay my bills, and how to smile at a new dawn.
I am stable in what some might consider mediocrity. But that mediocrity is an unknown luxury to most of the world today.
I know I'm lucky. And I know I'm grateful. Thank you, Lord. Thank You.
