Tuesday, January 20, 2004


I thought a lot today. I closed my eyes for a few minutes, sat still, and let any and everything pour through my brain. What I began to slowly realize while filtering through the thoughts that cluttered my head was that I am truly a man of opposites. I am not entirely sure how this came about, when the shift began, or if I was even conscious of the choices I made that lead to this state of an almost antonymic existence. I suppose I've always walked somewhat of a different path, marched to the beat of a different drummer (that is the lamest analogy by the way), and done my own thing but it was not until speaking with a few friends that I realized that there are a great deal of minor discrepancies between myself and the rest of the population, but deeper than all of that, there is one inherent difference that composes who I am, the question is, where did it come from?

The day we placed the silly tassel to the other side of the cap, the day those same caps littered the sky like falling stars, the day we walked across that high school field one last time, everything changed. From then on, and in truth even before that day, we were bombarded and assaulted with questions...Where will you go, what will you do, what do you want out of life, what's in your future, what do you want to be? Rarely, if ever, was the question asked to me, Who Are You? I do not know if it was the absence of that question, or the absence of an answer to all of the others, but from that day forward, I wanted to answer only one, Who was I? It is not arrogance, and it is not ignorance, but I feel the vast majority of people try very hard to answer the first questions, assuming the answers will eventually create a new answer for the latter. As I sit here typing this, I can think of so many people who know what it is they want out of life, where they want to end up, who they want to end up with, and what they Will be; as I look at myself, I realize I have no idea what I want out of life, I have no idea where I will end up, nor with who, nor what I will be, but I do know who I am.

The question I am left with, is which is better, or are they equal? Does the knowledge of who you truly are carry more weight than the knowledge of what you want to do? When will people who know what they "want to be" turn into that person? Will the person I am change, when I find out what I want? I do not know, but I do not think so. The person I am is strange, and the opposites inside me are confusing, I do not know when I strayed from so many of my peers, so many of my friends. I've never drank a beer, but I am intoxicated by music, by surfing, by writing. I believe in God but not the Church; I pray to God and meditate to Buddha; I cry, more than a lot of men I would wager; I laugh, also more than a lot of men; I am open and honest and I refuse to play games; I am not in the very least bit scared of dying, but I am not afraid to live. I know I will never work an 8-5 job, I know I will always hate wearing a tux.

I do not know how they got here, but the opposites inside me truly perplex me.