Oh, the bar, scene of so many happy evenings, interesting conversations, and even true love. A good bar is hard to find. My favorite bar in the whole world? That’s easy—Mean Eyed Cat, in Austin, Texas. It’s a Johnny Cash-themed bar, the beer is always cold (you can get Lone Star Light in a bottle, which is my litmus test for any good bar), and the music selection is unparalleled anywhere in the known universe. I truly do love that bar. What I love more about that bar are the people I go there with—it’s one of those places you only go with certain people, special people, because you want to savor the evening, and not worry about who’s staring you down, or how many beers you really ought to have.
Bars are funny places, and the feelings they bring out in me are many. I very rarely end up leaving a bar totally shit-canned. I also can say I’ve never left a bar with anyone I didn’t come in with. I have held friends’ hair while they vomited in bars. I have held friends’ hands’ while they cried in bars. I have hidden in the back of a bar to avoid talking to people who creep me out. I dug thrown up mushrooms out of a bar sink one night, to avoid my co-worker being arrested for an intoxication in public ticket. And one fateful night, at a bar called Blaine’s, I got up and danced on the tables when Sweet Home Alabama came over the speakers.
I remember when I thought bars were like Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders—full of delights and drama the likes of which I never could imagine. There’s a part of me that’s disappointed every time I rediscover that a bar is just a public living room, filled with people you don’t know.
Just like bars, most things in life are not the way I thought they would be. I thought by now that I would be married, or at least close to it, have a kid, maybe have a law degree, or be doing something fabulous in policy creation or in the non-profit sector. Instead, I quit a job I was good at, moved in with my mother (to whom I am terribly grateful), I had a very non-traditional, job taking care of my cousin with CP and his twin brother who is totally fine, except that he’s a 12 year old male, took a job for yet another church, bought a house, and set about to start my real-live adult life. There have been random crushes in the middle, one that showed some promise, but turned out to be nothing to get excited about. Reality is not what you imagine. Reality is what really IS, regardless of where my peers have ended up. This is my life—confusing, complex, never boring. It’s not where I imagined I would be, staring down the barrel of 30. But it all belongs to me.
See, most people have a pretty good idea of what they are supposed to do and be. I am supremely jealous of those people. For example: I changed majors five times in college. God bless my mother for never yelling at me like the rest of too many other mothers faced with vacillating and vexing offspring. Mom told me, “Babe, you know exactly how much money you have for college. You know exactly how many hours that will buy. Study what you want, and worry about making money later.” Good advice, to be sure, but now that I’m sitting on history degree, with a minor in political science, I’m wondering why I couldn’t have picked a major that was interesting AND lucrative.
I can tell you all about political theory and the rise of empires in Europe. I know the military history of Rome and the rise of the Republic. I think those things are important. I think those things are worth knowing. But I’d also like to know how in the world those things are supposed to get me to retirement, with something besides my big fat brain chock full of trivia to support me.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disappointed with my life at all. I’m very grateful to be alive, to be reasonably healthy, reasonably sane, and reasonably intelligent. I’m grateful for the opportunities of which I have been able to take advantage. I have lived a big life, up to this point. The question looming on my mind, and I’m sure it’s on the mind of my friends and family, is, “What in the hell comes next for Rachel?”
There have been many nights in my life when I have lain awake in bed, tempted by forces unseen to pack a bag, gas up my car, and just start driving. (My friend Dustin, who is a hero in my pantheon, suggested that I do just that as a remedy for my quarter life crisis. Instead, I went to the beach and worried about work the whole time I was gone. So much for advice…) But every time I sit up in bed and wonder which bag would hold the most stuff, or who I would call when I got to where ever I was going, all I can think about is the shit that would hit the fan once I was really gone. Where would my car payment come from? How would I pay Capital One the fee they are due this month? How would I explain to my family that I just had to bug out and find myself?
Find myself—God, but that sounds so freaking cliché. It’s a poor phrase, but so dead on the money. Where IS me? Is me what I own, or is me what owns me? Am I more than the sum of my credit card statements? Am I more than the degree that I still haven’t had framed, and have only actually looked at twice? Am I more than just my parents’ child? Am I more than all the jobs I’ve had, all the jobs I’ve not taken, all the jobs I’ve been turned down for? Am I more than the friend I have been, the sister I have tried to be? What in the fuck am I doing? Is there any end to the questions? More than that, is there even one sensible answer to even one of the questions? When do I stop asking the dumb questions, and start asking the smart ones? Is there a drug for this? Is there a premium on questions? Is there a surcharge if I ask the wrong ones? The answer, I think is always “Yes”. And the answer is always, “No”. This means that I’m right where I’m supposed to be: the most damnable place of all, if you ask me.
Do I imagine that I am going to find some state of inner peace by finding artful and artless pieces of graffiti scrawled on the bathrooms across this country? Do I think that one day, I will walk into some diner with my digital camera and find my soul mate? Do I think that anyone besides my family and friends will want to read any of what I have to say? Yes. Probably. Maybe not, but it’s worth the shot, right? I mean, going off to do “book research” sounds a hell of a lot more noble than “finding myself”.
I am as mystified by life and my place in the universe in my late 20’s as I was at 17. The upside, if that’s what I can call it, is that I am not alone. Oh no, not alone, not by a long shot. Three quarters of the people I call “friend” right now are suffering right along with me. We are clueless. Some of us know what we want to be. Some of us know who we want to be with. Some of us have an idea of where we want to go, and a few have an idea of how to get there. But for the most part, we are stumbling along together, leaning one on the other, trying to make our way into the wide world. In some ways, the advantages our parents gave us have crippled us. In some ways, the progress they made has hindered our development. How else do you explain the fact that half of all marriages fail? How else do you explain upper and middle class child neglect? How else do you explain our inability to function without cell phones, SUV’s, and the internet?
We are a generation of infants with adult bodies. We have the ability to reason, but not the wherewithal to get any real life business taken care of. We are horribly lazy. We have no voice in the public square, because we can’t find our cohesion, other than to be angst-ridden and wear the throw back clothing of our parents’ generation. We want to be cool, but we forget that when you are cool, you also have substance. And we don’t want substance, because that just takes too much fucking work.
Some of us are motivated, yes. But to what end? So we can drive the two-story, eight mile to the gallon behemoth that Hummer just put out? So we can buy a monstrosity of a domicile in some cookie-cutter neighborhood and fill it with stuff from Ikea and play house with the last person we had sex with because we think we might make pretty babies with them? What are we doing? What do we want to do? I ask myself that question, and I have trouble getting an answer. I ask my friends that question, and I have trouble getting an answer.
I want more than a house. I want more than a husband. I want more than two point five children. I want more than a volunteer position at the hospital auxiliary. I want more than a career. I want more than credit card bills and unrivaled cell phone reception. But I have no idea what that means. I don’t think it means going back to school and getting that Masters’ Degree in Renaissance Art that I’ve been toying with. I don’t think it means joining an on-line dating service because I’m too afraid to see what’s out there on my own. I don’t think it means freaking out and freezing my eggs before I turn 30, because I might not get married and I want to have a kid. I don’t think it means getting a job at the local coffee house to pay down my credit card debt faster. And I don’t think it means laying awake at night worrying about urban renewal policy and universal healthcare insurance.
In the final analysis, I think answering those questions is going to mean a lot of things. And it’s going to mean only one thing. The lot of things will lead to the one thing. Very Zen, I know. But at 1:20 on a Tuesday morning, it makes good sense to me.
Of all the things that I do know, I know this: I will not find bliss at the bottom of a coffee cup, unless I am sharing a cup of coffee with a good friend. I will not find my purpose in life sitting on my ass, letting life pass me by. I have, as have we all, an infinite amount of potential within me. And unless I am willing to waste that potential, (which I am not, because I firmly believe that all sin boils down to waste) I won’t find the many or the one.
Bars are funny places, and the feelings they bring out in me are many. I very rarely end up leaving a bar totally shit-canned. I also can say I’ve never left a bar with anyone I didn’t come in with. I have held friends’ hair while they vomited in bars. I have held friends’ hands’ while they cried in bars. I have hidden in the back of a bar to avoid talking to people who creep me out. I dug thrown up mushrooms out of a bar sink one night, to avoid my co-worker being arrested for an intoxication in public ticket. And one fateful night, at a bar called Blaine’s, I got up and danced on the tables when Sweet Home Alabama came over the speakers.
I remember when I thought bars were like Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders—full of delights and drama the likes of which I never could imagine. There’s a part of me that’s disappointed every time I rediscover that a bar is just a public living room, filled with people you don’t know.
Just like bars, most things in life are not the way I thought they would be. I thought by now that I would be married, or at least close to it, have a kid, maybe have a law degree, or be doing something fabulous in policy creation or in the non-profit sector. Instead, I quit a job I was good at, moved in with my mother (to whom I am terribly grateful), I had a very non-traditional, job taking care of my cousin with CP and his twin brother who is totally fine, except that he’s a 12 year old male, took a job for yet another church, bought a house, and set about to start my real-live adult life. There have been random crushes in the middle, one that showed some promise, but turned out to be nothing to get excited about. Reality is not what you imagine. Reality is what really IS, regardless of where my peers have ended up. This is my life—confusing, complex, never boring. It’s not where I imagined I would be, staring down the barrel of 30. But it all belongs to me.
See, most people have a pretty good idea of what they are supposed to do and be. I am supremely jealous of those people. For example: I changed majors five times in college. God bless my mother for never yelling at me like the rest of too many other mothers faced with vacillating and vexing offspring. Mom told me, “Babe, you know exactly how much money you have for college. You know exactly how many hours that will buy. Study what you want, and worry about making money later.” Good advice, to be sure, but now that I’m sitting on history degree, with a minor in political science, I’m wondering why I couldn’t have picked a major that was interesting AND lucrative.
I can tell you all about political theory and the rise of empires in Europe. I know the military history of Rome and the rise of the Republic. I think those things are important. I think those things are worth knowing. But I’d also like to know how in the world those things are supposed to get me to retirement, with something besides my big fat brain chock full of trivia to support me.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disappointed with my life at all. I’m very grateful to be alive, to be reasonably healthy, reasonably sane, and reasonably intelligent. I’m grateful for the opportunities of which I have been able to take advantage. I have lived a big life, up to this point. The question looming on my mind, and I’m sure it’s on the mind of my friends and family, is, “What in the hell comes next for Rachel?”
There have been many nights in my life when I have lain awake in bed, tempted by forces unseen to pack a bag, gas up my car, and just start driving. (My friend Dustin, who is a hero in my pantheon, suggested that I do just that as a remedy for my quarter life crisis. Instead, I went to the beach and worried about work the whole time I was gone. So much for advice…) But every time I sit up in bed and wonder which bag would hold the most stuff, or who I would call when I got to where ever I was going, all I can think about is the shit that would hit the fan once I was really gone. Where would my car payment come from? How would I pay Capital One the fee they are due this month? How would I explain to my family that I just had to bug out and find myself?
Find myself—God, but that sounds so freaking cliché. It’s a poor phrase, but so dead on the money. Where IS me? Is me what I own, or is me what owns me? Am I more than the sum of my credit card statements? Am I more than the degree that I still haven’t had framed, and have only actually looked at twice? Am I more than just my parents’ child? Am I more than all the jobs I’ve had, all the jobs I’ve not taken, all the jobs I’ve been turned down for? Am I more than the friend I have been, the sister I have tried to be? What in the fuck am I doing? Is there any end to the questions? More than that, is there even one sensible answer to even one of the questions? When do I stop asking the dumb questions, and start asking the smart ones? Is there a drug for this? Is there a premium on questions? Is there a surcharge if I ask the wrong ones? The answer, I think is always “Yes”. And the answer is always, “No”. This means that I’m right where I’m supposed to be: the most damnable place of all, if you ask me.
Do I imagine that I am going to find some state of inner peace by finding artful and artless pieces of graffiti scrawled on the bathrooms across this country? Do I think that one day, I will walk into some diner with my digital camera and find my soul mate? Do I think that anyone besides my family and friends will want to read any of what I have to say? Yes. Probably. Maybe not, but it’s worth the shot, right? I mean, going off to do “book research” sounds a hell of a lot more noble than “finding myself”.
I am as mystified by life and my place in the universe in my late 20’s as I was at 17. The upside, if that’s what I can call it, is that I am not alone. Oh no, not alone, not by a long shot. Three quarters of the people I call “friend” right now are suffering right along with me. We are clueless. Some of us know what we want to be. Some of us know who we want to be with. Some of us have an idea of where we want to go, and a few have an idea of how to get there. But for the most part, we are stumbling along together, leaning one on the other, trying to make our way into the wide world. In some ways, the advantages our parents gave us have crippled us. In some ways, the progress they made has hindered our development. How else do you explain the fact that half of all marriages fail? How else do you explain upper and middle class child neglect? How else do you explain our inability to function without cell phones, SUV’s, and the internet?
We are a generation of infants with adult bodies. We have the ability to reason, but not the wherewithal to get any real life business taken care of. We are horribly lazy. We have no voice in the public square, because we can’t find our cohesion, other than to be angst-ridden and wear the throw back clothing of our parents’ generation. We want to be cool, but we forget that when you are cool, you also have substance. And we don’t want substance, because that just takes too much fucking work.
Some of us are motivated, yes. But to what end? So we can drive the two-story, eight mile to the gallon behemoth that Hummer just put out? So we can buy a monstrosity of a domicile in some cookie-cutter neighborhood and fill it with stuff from Ikea and play house with the last person we had sex with because we think we might make pretty babies with them? What are we doing? What do we want to do? I ask myself that question, and I have trouble getting an answer. I ask my friends that question, and I have trouble getting an answer.
I want more than a house. I want more than a husband. I want more than two point five children. I want more than a volunteer position at the hospital auxiliary. I want more than a career. I want more than credit card bills and unrivaled cell phone reception. But I have no idea what that means. I don’t think it means going back to school and getting that Masters’ Degree in Renaissance Art that I’ve been toying with. I don’t think it means joining an on-line dating service because I’m too afraid to see what’s out there on my own. I don’t think it means freaking out and freezing my eggs before I turn 30, because I might not get married and I want to have a kid. I don’t think it means getting a job at the local coffee house to pay down my credit card debt faster. And I don’t think it means laying awake at night worrying about urban renewal policy and universal healthcare insurance.
In the final analysis, I think answering those questions is going to mean a lot of things. And it’s going to mean only one thing. The lot of things will lead to the one thing. Very Zen, I know. But at 1:20 on a Tuesday morning, it makes good sense to me.
Of all the things that I do know, I know this: I will not find bliss at the bottom of a coffee cup, unless I am sharing a cup of coffee with a good friend. I will not find my purpose in life sitting on my ass, letting life pass me by. I have, as have we all, an infinite amount of potential within me. And unless I am willing to waste that potential, (which I am not, because I firmly believe that all sin boils down to waste) I won’t find the many or the one.
mil besos--rmg
4 comments:
Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, it is however that we are capable beyond our wildest dreams.
Yours is a quest of the masses through the ages. Sorry to burst your bubble in thinking that no one has faced this as you and or your generation has. While you would partially hold me responsible for your dilema; I think the problem with all quest for self is the imbalance between thinking either one's self is not "good enough", "smart enough", etc and thinking one is supposed to be "the super human who does it all perfectly and at the right moments and lives life w/no regrets of global renoun who has amassed fame & fortune; saved the planet, cured diseases; fed the hungry; made a perfect world and every one is singing kum ba ya and you still are humble. We are called to be...to be still and to know...to love one another...what we do in life that pays the bills we choose to have is not who we are; but we should be able to be who we are when we are earning our wage. Who we are is always in a state of becoming; we never arrive and there is NO instruction book; although one's religious life is usually a great reference. Too much emphasis is put on "finding yourself" what would you do if you found self? would the quest stop? would progress stop? seek to know what defines you; those things you cannot compromise nor deny about self. work to improve those you dislike or cultivate something you admire in others. Every changing /always constant; the beauty and mystery of life. mom
I identify with most all of the sentiments you expressed here. We've had tenured conversations on some of the things you've touched on, and I consider myself one of those stumbling along with you.
It is tempting to drop everything conventional and go about on your own quest for yourself. That's mainly why I keep good company with a handful of shady characters who'd be considered outsiders on the fringe of society. Armed with cans of gasoline, matches, and clever insurance fraud they can take good care of the particulars that would truly cut my vines free if I ever do decide say fuck it all. It becomes increasingly more difficult to keep from doing so.
However, I do believe that the destination is the actual journey itself, and I'm glad that you're on the bus with me lady.
Cory
"I have hidden in the back of a bar to avoid talking to people who creep me out."
...or go on blind dates with men who have the stink eye.
and a pony tail.
love youuuu,
chase
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