What I Want - 9/29/11

Recently, I was taken aback by a remark made by a couple of people in my life.  These individuals really don't know me very well, yet they were insightful enough in this particular instance.  They both told me, half-amused...as if it was the most obvious thing in the world....that I don't know what I want.  Now, this wasn't in regard to something trivial, like what I was having for dinner that evening, or what I was planning to do for fun on the weekend, but rather.....I don't know what I want out of life itself.

And the only reason I remember they're both saying this to me is because that, although I don't care for a second what these acquaintances think about me, they hit the nail on the head.  I truly DON'T know what I want. 

But do any of us?  We are a calvacade of indecision.  Of various wants, desires, and preferences that come and go without our conscious intent.  I've known, without a doubt, that I've wanted three very specific things in my life.  One involved a place, one involves a person, and the last involves the completion (and publication of) my novel.  But the particulars I'm not too sure of.  I never have been, and I doubt I ever will be.  I still don't know what I want to BE when I "grow up", a closed captionist is merely a stepping stone into whatever else I ultimately choose to do (but whatever it is, I feel it must involve writing somehow).  I'm still completely baffled as to where I should be living when I inevitably move out of Florida.  I adore many places that I've been to, and could easily see myself living at any of these locations.  But again, I'm not sure....and you'd think this uncertainty would bother me.  But you'd be wrong.

I think certainty is boring; it mitigates potential by ignoring a wealth of other possibilities.  It's good to have an idea of what you want, and a general direction and motivation for achieving it.  But to lock yourself in to a set plan or guideline in order to arrive at the manifestation of your desire is absolutely pointless in my opinion.  It leaves no room for serendipity, for the sweet intervention of destiny or kismet, for the spontaneous arrival of good fortune and chance encounters to take your life in an entirely different direction that's all the richer because it's seemingly random.

So essentially what I'm saying is I don't know what I want and so I don't know how to get there.  But there's a freedom in not knowing this, and perhaps that's what my soul wants the most.  The freedom to make it up as I go.