An Unoriginal Thought

Sometimes I feel like I’m incapable of an original thought. It’s as though my mind works in these endless cycles that just forget and renew the same revelations over and over again. It’s not that I mind the cycle. I like the delight that comes from rekindling an epiphany, from discovering it in an unexpected time and place. Still, I often wonder if I’m making any progression.

It’s funny how song lyrics and poems and stories hold different meanings each time I discover them. I like the way children’s books always seem so profound when I read them as an adult. I like the way a song that meant nothing to me five years ago can suddenly seem like it was written just for me. I like the way concepts far beyond my grasp a short while ago seem so obvious to me now.

And yet, as I read over old blog entries, I can’t help but be struck at how similar they all are. Everything I write makes me pause and wonder if I’ve written it all before, if I spend my time just quoting ideas back to myself. I guess there’s nothing wrong with that, except the whole reason I write is to discover something new, to dig a little deeper into my soul. It’s frustrating that I can’t seem to reach a new plateau of understanding. Perhaps I’m just too impatient.

Lately I’ve been talking with a dear friend about life choices. He’s reached one of those inevitable forks in the road where one questions the path their on. I think he’s making the decision to change his, and it got me thinking about all of the changes I’ve made, even just in this past year. It’s so strange to think that even within the cycles, within the similarities of my entries, I see the world so differently than I once did. The older I get, the shorter my life seems, and I value my time so much more. I know that I’m only twenty, and I have a long way to go, but who really knows? Today could be the last day of my life.

Maybe it sounds really cheesy, but what I’ve been thinking about this past week is how okay I’d be with that. I spent a long time feeling so frustrated that I didn’t have a set plan for my life, that each day I’d get up not knowing where I was headed. It annoyed me that while I followed my heart, I also had to accept that life does go on, and that I couldn’t realistically live each day as though it were my last. At some point, practicality and logic would always seep in.

Somewhere along the way, I decided to fight it. I wish that I knew when or where or how that changed, but I don’t. What I do know is that I’ve become more of a lovey-dovey hippie in the past year than I had ever planned on becoming. I cast aside all of those practical voices nagging at me and decided that I would go to sleep each night feeling complete. I do feel complete, even though there are a thousand things I want to do and feel and experience and change about myself, I somehow feel complete.

I think it’s mostly because I make sure, each and every day, that the people I love know that I love them. I’m by no means saying that I want my life to end anytime soon, but if for some reason it did, I would leave this world knowing that I shared all the love I could while I was here, and because of that, I’d know that my time here was worthwhile. I know that it’s worthwhile.

I still don’t have a plan. I still feel unoriginal and restless and hungry for more, but I also feel a kind of sublime contentment with things that I haven’t felt in a while. That I haven’t felt since the last time around. I’m probably really insane, and this living in the moment lifestyle will come back to haunt me someday when all of my friends become doctors and lawyers and I’m living from paycheck to paycheck in an attempt to “find myself.” Still, for now, the present thrills me it’s in uncertainty and I could die right now feeling happy and complete. Maybe it’s not original, but it’s me.