for life in the cage where courage's mate runs deep in the wake

My life has been a series of choices I've made because they were the ones that presented themselves to me. I'm often unsure that I've made any decisions at all.

Everything has always conformed to plan that's been set out for me. Go to school, go do some more school, earn a professional degree, work, have a career, make money, live a life. I haven't deviated from the plan and the only options within the plan are choice of school and choice of degree - of which my options have been slim and  my choices were based on rules that set the plan.

I make my choices based on a weighing of all my options. I aim for everything within my power and when I am offered an objectively valuable option, I take it. I take it automatically. I do this because every choice is another step in the plan and I'm incapable of refusing the plan's best option. Every choice that I have ever made is simply the result of picking whichever was the most valuable options. A computer model could make these choices. A computer model can catalog the level of prestige, the level of recognition and the level of income that every option will lead to and then just choose option with the largest theoretical profit. A computer model would have made the same decisions I have made. A computer model could live my life for me.

I am confined and I am afraid of finding out that my life is going to be series of milestones, none of which I ever had the option of not achieving. But most of all, I'm afraid because I'm ending this entry by saying -

- so is life.

for love is the breath

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.

 - Richard Siken

I have a love for passages that make me wish deeply that I knew the feelings that they are conveying. When words strike you so profoundly that you feel as though you've lived its story, but in reality you are so incredibly removed that afterwards you feel empty.

I find it strangely fulfilling.

trying to be something that I wasn't at all

A lot of days I wake up feeling like life is a gift I was given,
but it's a gift that I didn't ask for.
A gift that I'm going to waste because I don't know what to do with it.
And it terrifies me.

do you want to be afraid?

I'm reading my Socioemotional Development Psychology textbook right now - the chapter on sadness. There's a bit about how humans are actually one of the only species that cry when we are distressed. Other species' versions of crying are usually distressing wails and calls, but no tearing up as we do. Some psychologists propose that crying is a habit from early life that we can't seem to kick. Crying is instrumental when we're young because we need to let our caregivers know that we're hungry or uncomfortable, lonely or just needy. But as adults, your words, facial expressions and demeanor suffice. Another example of something we carry over from childhood, despite it's relative uselessness, is play. Adults of other species are also rarely seen fooling around.

Adult play was such a strange concept to me before I read this passage. Not because I don't do it, or not because I don't do it often. I do, and a lot. So much of what we say and do is just play. Nothing more than play. To think of it as something that has no purpose except as something I won't let go of from childhood, has never made more sense to me before now.

I think that we play (and cry), even though they're behaviors that no longer serve a purpose in our adult lives, because we're trying to hang on to our childhoods. It makes sense that as a species that can reflect upon our own mortality, our own inevitable endings, that we would want to prolong the period in our lives in which we didn't have so many doubts and fears. The more we grow, the more we are aware. We routinely can't stop ourselves from wondering what happens tomorrow, next year, ten years from now or after the lights finally go off.

But childhood is when you know no bounds, you are at once omnipotent and omniscient. I can think of no truer example of ignorance defining bliss. And who's to say there's something wrong with that? Who's to say that a child's lack of awareness is anything short of wonderful? A child never doubts themselves when they play. A child becomes her own master and commander, her own hero and her own savior in a completely different way than an adult who has to eventually accept that they are all these things for themselves. As adults, you have to accept your existential loneliness and fight the good fight for all your hopes and dreams. A child chooses to fight, chooses their goals and desires - nay sayers be damned.

Next time you play, feel limitless. Climb a tree, build a pillow fort, crawl into a box and be a deep space explorer. We are regularly and continually helpless, grasping at straws to explain humanity and existence and being. But once in a while we need to empower ourselves. Go on, play on.

don't be distracted, don't be distracted

An open letter to my limitless brother, 

Every talent that you've ever gifted to show me has moved me in ways that I fail to communicate in words. From the first time I heard you sing to every moment that I've witnessed you perform (in every sense of the word), I can feel nothing short of pride and privilege. You continuously catch me off guard with all your capabilities and insight beyond your years.

Your future holds no locked doors, only paths to every endeavor you wish to pursue. Not knowing exactly what you want the future to hold doesn't make you any less driven than I was. Your abundant repertoire of skills begs to differ. So don't fret; sing to your heart's desire, act, play and write your every whim. You have shown me time and time again that you are boundless.