I got in the car after class, ready to go home. But I took a right instead of a left… I wasn’t sure where I was going. I think I just needed to get away from everything for a while. I drove down to McMinville, looked for the crazy church for a minute or two, and then diverged westward. I don’t really know where I went, but it was great. I took a road that lead out to the hills, beyond the farm land that surrounds the town.
If you’ll remember, I was prone to taking drives when I was in the net. The whole time, every time, I had this intense aura about me that I was looking for something, that I needed to find something/somewhere. I felt like that in the car today. There was one point during my drive where I could either go right or left, going left would take me to the hills, and going right would take me back into town… usually I would go right. My thinking is that I don’t want to waste gas, and I am less likely to get lost or be stranded in a place that I have no idea how to navigate. I used to have a guilty feeling in the net when I would drive, like “I’m not supposed to be doing this”, which would make every decision to go farther out of the way of anything a miniature damnation of myself. Today I thought that my feeling of being in search of something was a feeling of wanting to find where I belong. We are all on the same system of roads, but we are all on different journeys. Every side street that I pass by in town has a sign at the intersection, and each street is where someone’s journey ends. None of those streets belong to me.
Today I didn’t go right, I went left. The hills were so beautiful. The road was windy. It would plunge into deep forest, and then emerge to show the scenic landscape, the miles of trees, the clouds resting just above the hill tops, the sun shining through the clouds, onto the trees, onto me. There was so much room there, just space to be occupied by peace and beauty. The feeling of searching vanished, and I had forgotten about my conversation with myself about looking for belonging altogether when the words “I belong here” slipped out of my mouth as casually as the wind was blowing across the hills. I had a spiritual moment.
As great as it was up there, I knew that I would have to turn around. I usually don’t like turning around. I almost always try to find a way to make a circular path back to where I started from. The road was beginning to become more hazardous, and there was also no signs of reaching a town or intersection within the next few miles, so I pulled over and retraced my path back. On my way back, I became sorrowful. I didn’t want to come back, I didn’t want to rejoin the madness, the hustle and bustle. I knew I would be coming back to the feeling of searching, and that I must leave the one place that I had been in a long time where I felt belonging.
I was leaving a feeling behind that I used to own. I felt like the first 20 years of my life had been about one thing. I felt like I had accumulated this totally personalized relationship to God and the universe. It was more than “a relationship with God”, it was something that not only would I not share, but could not share. It was something that couldn’t be put into words. It was something that was mine, a part of me, something born out of my life. It was ruined, it was destroyed, it’s gone. That asshole destroyed it. The fact is, that I would not be in college if I hadn’t been involved in the net. I wouldn’t be on my way to becoming a psychologist, I would not marry the woman that I will marry, have the kids that i will have, or work the job that I will work. I would be someone very different if I had not joined the net. I would still have that special thing, there would still be something personal, authored from me in my life.
It didn’t even matter if it was special to anyone else, it could have been a worthless piece of crap to the world, what mattered is that it was special to me, in my world. What do I have now? Now I’m smart. Now I can rip almost any argument to shreds. I can learn anything that can be taught. I am so good at being right. It’s my new special thing, only… it’s not special. Being smart is about adopting the logic and values of the broader context and portraying them more consistently than anyone else. Being smart is about doing well with what other people give you. Smartness can’t be my new special thing, because it is not mine, and it leaves me so empty at the end of the day. I don’t have my old special thing anymore, so what is there? How does anything become special again?
At this point in my experience, the good things don’t replace the bad, the bad things become numbing things, and not feeling anything feels good compared to feeling bad.
Depending on being smart leaves you empty, sure, but it sure as hell doesn’t let anyone leave you broken. I hate when people say that they are following their dreams.
