There is something alluring about wandering. The reason why we get excited when we read about an adventure is that we crave the uncertainty of the future.
What can happen next? We don't seem to allow ourselves, however, to fully realize this craving. We are trained to believe that the ideas of structure and of safety and of stability are means to self-actualization. We are compartmentalized and segmented, and thus we compartmentalize and segment our own lives. We dare not obstruct the proper order of living, so we stay. We obey. We are obligated to abandon the idea of adventure in order to absorb the idea of a structured, unrelenting happiness. We then treat it as if it were the better choice. To some it may be. But not to me.
I've been beginning to realize some new things about myself. Before, in my transitional phases, I had a clear path. One road. As if the world was saying, "I've made this path for you, now follow it". And follow it I did, through grade school, through certain jobs, and now, through college. There was never really any other way for me. But now I rest on the pivot. The transition from the smooth pavement to the wilderness of this shrinking world. This world, now, which is literally infinite. No matter what direction I choose to go, no matter where I am in the world, I can move forward forever. And then I think of the adventures we read as kids. They taunt us from the pages of novels, from the encasement of movie screens, from the controls of your video games. They beckon for you to watch, to understand, but to never partake. Adventure, as it may seem, is only for fiction. Yet, my heart has betrayed my training, and I wish for less structure. I wish for more adventure.
I feel as if I am crafted perfectly for aimlessness. I have no true sense of home. My home, for my entire life, has always changed. Always, it seemed, in a different location. Over time, I adapted. My home became my self, my thoughts, my dreams. My home became the people around me. And, just as easy as I moved around, so did my home. And, now, it seems simple to just go. Always running, whether it is away from the last or towards the next. Aimless.
I have never been able to keep anyone important to me close. Mostly, this is due to my own inability to do so. I've never been able to give myself to anyone. Allow myself to become vulnerable. I guess it's because I always knew that I would be gone. That they would be gone once I left. It's hard to start something, and maintain something, when you can only see the end. It is my curse, I know, to always feel alone in a crowded room, but I have carried my cross for many years now and I have grown accustomed to the burden. Being alone to me isn't loneliness. Loneliness is the idea that you need people and you don't have them. I don't need people. I am always and never alone.
So now, I approach the pivot. "Quarterlife", they call it. In a world where the security of structure is becoming unraveled, where the ideas that have been fed to us for our entire young adult lives have been diminished, where the values and morality of our forefathers have done nothing but plague us, just as it did them, I feel as if adventure may be the only sensible alternative. I feel as if it's almost a necessity to merge off the winding road and into the unknown. To take it a day at a time. At least then, when the day is over, the sun setting and the moon rising, you can know that the allure of adventure isn't bound to fiction. It is a part of life.
