These are times - a fragment

These are times when you cannot help but wonder what you are doing and why in the world you are doing it. I find myself in an occupation chosen not as much through personal preference but rather through the push-and-shove of what seemed “right,” according to the campus career center and various other constituents, for a college graduate with little to no skills whatsoever. And as I sit back in my herman miller-design office chair, pensively perusing the maple décor of my cubicle, rendered oh-so unprofessional by a collage of friends and family on one wall, chinese calligraphy on the other, and two dogs on my Windows NT screensaver, I cannot come up with a single answer to my question that comes from the heart. Sure, it is a good experience, a great professional stepping stone, a sure ticket to business school, and a boot camp for any fuzzy major, but when it comes down to it, who really cares? Do I want “J.H.C., spent good portion of her youth slaving away at an investment bank” on my tombstone?

Yesterday, after a 128+ hour week of continuous work on minimal sleep, I took a day off to recuperate. Yet I had to take a sick leave, and not only that, I also felt incompetent and guilty for doing so. For that to be my instinctual reaction to such a situation makes me realize how warped my psyche has become when it comes to my job. It is a thankless job that I do, where not only are there inordinate expectations on your mental performance, but even more so, a ridiculous demand on your physical stamina. What am I doing here? If I am to throw myself into work in such a manner, should I not be working for something that I truly believe in? I can feel that something has slipped from my grasp, some integral part of myself, the self that I liked better than the one I see now, grappling in my cubicle with little sleep, little time, and little reprieve.

I want to find the self who could appreciate the dance of the twinkly lights upon the trees in the wintry breeze, where green leaves, then brown and red, once danced a season and another season past. I want to find the self who used to laugh with careless abandon, throw her head back and guffaw with a reckless enthusiasm that warmed the heart with a shred of optimism so scant in the melancholy world about her. Where is the power that once flourished inside me? “Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our power.” This is what Wordsworth warned of, this materialism that surrounds me, this humongous metropolis looming above me, threatening to strip me of my appreciation of the sky, the clouds, and of any semblance of Nature that reminds me how alive I am, how alive I should be. But it is not the forbidding skyscrapers, nor the red glow that replaces the stars at night, nor the streets lined with telephone poles and lampposts replacing trees, nor the blackened puff of an exhaust, nor the discord of honking taxi-horns that dampen the spirit and cloud the mind. For within these objects we too can find an imprint of Nature with a bit of imagination.

Rather, it is human nature that truly looms above me. I find myself a complete amateur, naïve and unwilling to let go of my naivete for it is too familiar of a companion. I am not good at “the game,” and yet I watch it unfold around me, a breath here and a comment there. I will not succumb to anything that is against what I believe and against the grain of who I am. Whether or not that is noble or naïve or stupid or cowardly, I do not care. Yet I still am mired in the process of finding what I believe and recognizing who it is that looks back at me from a steamy bathroom mirror every morning of every day. I want to discover where there is room for improvement, and realize where there is value. I am still struggling to capture what it is that drives my personality and what is it that drives my beliefs. The least I can do is act with my heart and abide by what I have come to define as “right.” Yet this fuzzy, foggy definition of right and wrong becomes fuzzier and foggier by the day.

In the matters of the heart I am equally confused. I am in love with a man who can potentially never make me happy. Not because he has no intentions of doing so, but because the things I need are so aberrant from the nature of his personality. This love is wearing me thin. I want to hug him with joy and be joyfully hugged in return. I want to look deep into his eyes and find a better sense of myself there. But the nature of who he is, that very same nature that drives his kind actions and genuine concern for my welfare, precludes the romance and giddiness that I need. He will never allow himself to be happy, for he is too laden with responsibilities and self-imposed encumbrances. And I realize that I have begun to shine a little less brightly, to laugh a little less loudly, and step a little less lightly than before. How ironic can that be? I meet someone who is so nice to me, so incredibly nice that I cannot even believe it at times, and yet, he is so emotionally unreachable. I am drowning in his kindness. I do not know how to let him go, for he is so kind to me, yet I do not know how to be happy with him.

And this is the ground upon which I stand, so uncertain, and so real- where do I begin with myself? What road should I follow to discover who I truly am? How do I let go of someone who is so right, yet so wrong all at the same time?