Frustrations

Tomorrow I will be 22 years old, and I ask myself what I have to show for my life thus far. All you think about when you turn 21 is about how you can now legally drink and gamble. If you didn't consider yourself an adult at age 18, then you were sure to have reached that status at 21. And now there's nothing left but to face life. There are no special bells and whistles from here on. What is special about 22 is "Oh crap! I'm 22!" I feel like it's time to start figuring things out. I have one more year of college, and then I need to be ready to make some kind of decision as to where the next segment of my life will be positioned to run its course.

I've just spent the weekend in Canada with some friends from college. We were visiting another friend up there. Last night I talked with a guy who had graduated last year as a studio art major. I asked him if he had come to Whitman expecting to be a studio art major, hoping for some reason that he would say no. Turns out my hopes were confirmed. He had had no idea as an incoming freshman, expecting to be a math/physics guy. But he has such a passion and budding knowledge about different kinds of art: painting, architecture, etc. I know this because he often brings up such topics, his thoughts, knowledge and observations, in general conversation, as he sees things out the window from a moving car. He has a passion for art, and it's exciting and encouraging to see.

As I said, I began to talk with him last night, voluntarily beginning to talk about myself and my own desires. I have such a deeply rooted desire to create. I feel as if there is a reservoir of potential energy building up within me ready to be released and put to use. But I don't know what to say or how to say it. I just read the recent posted entries from the blogs of my friends, and I though they were beautiful. In many ways I connected with them. I enjoy this blog, and I have had some genuine fun writing some of it. And maybe that is good. But how is it important? How is writing about my thoughts of film all that important? I've never created a film. I dream about how awesome such an experience must be, but I have nothing of value to say, or if I do, I have no idea how to fashion my ideas into any kind of cohesive form. I have tried to express my creativity through playing the guitar. Yet I realize that I am not that good, nor will I ever be all that much better than I am. That's just the way it is. I've tried writing songs, but I can't ever do it. There have been plenty of various riffs and chord progressions that I have come up with, but I cannot for the life of me put anything together! I have no idea how to put together a song! And I'm not even talking about writing or applying lyrics. That's another obstacle that I can't overcome on its own. I wish I could write stories, but I don't know where to start or where to take them. My own experiences? Ok, I can do that, but what do I say through that, how do I describe this particular experience? I begin to write, not having any idea of what my objective is, and immediately stumble on how to form a sentence. I am so critical of what I do, that I silence myself before I ever even allow myself to speak. How will I ever get from the point of merely envying the passion and genius of other people to being able to express my own?

I remember being a very happy kid in the sixth grade. I was nerdy, scrawny, four-eyes, what have you. But my classroom that particular year became a comfortable environment in which I felt encouraged to be myself, to revel in the hidden corners of my ridiculous 12 year old imagination, and bring them to life. I am romanticizing the experience, of course, but it was truly a time that I was allowing myself to create in different ways. There were these humorous comic characters that I invented, such as a character who did nothing but played ping pong. I suppose to describe him, he was invisible except for a smily face, two arms and pair of shorts. He permanently carried around a ping pong paddle in his left hand. I'll never forget that stupid little character. And it makes me proud that I can claim complete creative ownership over that.

It is difficult enough for me to create my own opinions. It seems that anything I argue is simply an amalgam of opinions and ideas that I have collected from various conversations, sermons, eavesdroppings, speeches, etc. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they are so easily persuaded? Two people will be arguing against each other, and I will be able to do nothing but perceive the truth and validity of the claims of both sides! What do I have to argue that comes directly from me? Should I try and cut myself of from the opinions and exclamations of other people. Do I just need to sit down and be patient, and begin to ponder about the world and its problems, and from this patience and isolation, allow individual thoughts to flow? Can it be, in fact, somewhat dangerous to our individuality when, although upon good intentions, we seek out knowledge and ideas from alternate voices? When we read books from African Americans writers and watch films by Native American directors? What if our individuality is, in fact, more like something that is slowly shed and torn off like old skin, the more we experience the world and listen to the voices of its different people?

Well, this is probably not it. But I must say, I do not know how to reconcile my frustrations. This past weekend has been strange. I have hung out with three different groups of friends: some people I used to be friends with from school who I eventually drifted apart from, friends from college, and my best friends who came from church and youth group. It was a fun and unique experience being among all three groups. The first group made me wonder what my life would have been like had I shared their similar group experiences in high school. The second group made me think about how much a college experience like the one we share has forever opened up our eyes to a new way of looking at the world and the lives ahead of us. Among the third group of friends, I realize that remaining in the same place will probably limit a person's development. One's ideas will not be changed. Unless you force yourself to adapt to the challenges of a new environment, you will not easily change much at all. What this means, I suppose, it is that my individuality is indeed not completely my own. I owe who I am as much to myself as to these different groups of friends, with whom I have shared similar experiences. In retrospect, that ping pong character from sixth grade would probably not have been invented had it not been for my friendship with a particular friend from that class.

Previously, I had been asking myself, why don't I feel like I completely belong to any of these groups of friends? But then I also remember a brief situation from last night, in which I was sitting with the friend I had gone to visit in one of his hometown cafes. He was approached by one of his old friends, and their conversation was brief. This guy must also know what it's like to be caught in the middle of past and present experiences. He must also have old friends who he has trouble relating to now that he has been away at college for the past 3 years.

Maybe my individuality is the very reason I feel such unrest among groups of people. Where am I going with this? This has become sort of stream-of-consciousness. I think I am trying too hard to build up to a resolution. A few minutes ago, I felt I was on the verge of something profound. But my indecisive nature, my too critical thinking and my fear of writing too much (too late) has perhaps reared its ugly head once again.

I am not really all that worried about turning 22. It does sound dramatic to say that I am. I just listened to a song by Switchfoot called "Let That be Enough." In it the singer says, "It's my birthday tomorrow / No one here could know / I was born this Thursday / 22 years ago." Remembering this line is what caused me to listen to it, because although tomorrow is NOT Thursday, it is my 22nd birthday. The first words to the song say, "Wish I had what I needed / To be on my own / Cause I feel so defeated / And I'm feeling alone / And it all seems so helpless / And I have no plans / I'm a plane in the sunset / With nowhere to land." I don't know if this was really what the songwriter was feeling when he wrote the song. Maybe it too was a bit of romanticism, but I can definitely relate to what it says. My station is nothing new. Perhaps even the writing of such a beatiful song was not enough to satisfy his anxieties. Perhaps he too felt critical of what he had created, annoyed that his poetry was too simple and lacking a true sense of individuality. The song actually continues, "And all I see, it could never make me happy / And all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing." He has seen much of the world by 22. But no matter what new places he travels, no matter how many new experiences he might enjoy and be influenced by, he will never be completely at ease, never quite feel like he can belong. All of the things he creates never quite acheive the greatness that he strives for in his mind. They are like sandcastles that get trampled on or demolished by the tide in the midst of their construction. Maybe they just buckle under their own poor design, because they were never built strong in the first place.

The friend who I talked to last night told me a particular piece of advice that I should probably consider. He told me that to become great at an art, one has to practice it every day. Maybe this sort of excersize is a step in the right direction. Maybe allowing myself to ramble on like this as a way of conveying my frustrations is a means to settling them. Who knows? And more importantly, who cares?