journies

Last night I dreamed of college. I don't know if it's because my oldest is there now, figuring it all out, or because it the 10 year span of school was a big chunk of my life. So this morning I woke up thinking about it all.

For me, college was a collage of experience. I started off on one academic path, quickly chose another, and finally took the quickest trail to the finish line. I experimented with relationships, monogamy, serial monogamy, non-monogamy, and everything else I could find. I created friendships, misplaced them, destroyed them, nurtured them and just ignored them. I read books that challenged everything I believed, everything I thought I knew and broke me down into nothingness. I questioned everything and everyone, burned the proverbial bridges and plunged myself into solitude for months on end. At the end of it all, the person who had been forged was strong and I liked her.

So here I am in my year of reflection and the lines of Eliot come to mind,

"Time for you and time for me, / And time yet for a hundred indecisions,/ And for a hundred visions and revisions, / Before the taking of a toast and tea."

I wonder what I would change, or do differently if I had a hundred visions and revisions. And, I wonder about my daughter who has embarked upon the adventure of post-high school life. What do I wish for her? Perhaps, more importantly, I wonder if it's possible for her to reach a waypoint in the future of her life without having to endure all the loss and pain that I did? If it is possible, would it be best? If I could spare her all the bad, would the good be worth it, would it be real and sustainable?

I'm not a big fan of Nietzsche, with his "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," although at times I toy with agreeing. Lately I find myself sympathizing more and more with the Transcendentalists: "If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

So maybe the question is not what I would do for her journey, but what she must do for her journey. Maybe all I can do is encourage her to advance confidently and to keep going.

The irony isn't lost on me that at age 40 I should have my life figured out, yet I find myself at a crossroads that intersects with a younger life. Maybe that's the point, that the journey doesn't end. That, as Emerson said the unexamined life isn't worth living, and it's the process of reflection that makes it meaningful.

Now my head hurts and I'm back where I started.... I'm getting the need to reflect and examine, to ponder and persevere but what I really desire, some assurance that there's meaning to all this, is still eluding me.