late nights and loud fights
it's all just a blur

3:44 p.m. | 2004-04-03
A Preparatory Life

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.

Mercutio, Act 1, Scene 4

These days are preparatory. We sit and we study, and we learn, and we love, and we enjoy all in the name of future. Our lives are driven by the fact that in a mere 4 years we will have a degree to our name (whether we truly earned it or not) and will be using that degree to get a job and have success.

There's the rub. In getting our degree, we face our next challenge. And I have no qualm with calling our life a series of challenges, for that is what it is. However, here we refer to and live it as something else.

We receive our degrees. Then we go on our first true job search. We might get an entry level position, or depending on our credentials one further up the job ladder, none the less we are getting a start in this same world--preparing ourselves. We prepare for the next level, the next highest job, the bigger salary.

We prepare ourselves to meet love, to greet it with open arms, and to find what we truly want in another. We get our better job, and yet there is another. Another something to strive for. There's always another something. We do what we do now for where it will lead us in the future.

And what future are we headed to?

Am I to spend all of my energy, money, and time on one search? To get to...retirement? Where does this goal lead us? I get that better job, that bigger salary--but in all honestly, I love getting it, that strife that I have to endure. Where does it end though? When I find true love? No. When I get to the top of the company? No.

In hope it's when we can leave our jobs, have enough money to sustain ourselves, and watch the world go by, doing the things we truly love. Paint. Build. Love. Smile. Make music. Whatever it be.

When I think of it, though...

I see my grandmother, sitting at her kitchen table. Almost always alone. Watching soap operas. Battling her weight. Living for the single moments on the weekends where she gets a mixture of joy and terror. Her grandchildren visiting her makes her smile. Her daughter mocking her for the state of her house makes her frown. And she lives for those moments.

In hope--I can live unlike that. I can live in this moment, loving this moment, doing what I want to do (yes because it will lead me to success) but also because it will make me happy. Because I need to be happy.

I will not be that old woman who sits at her kitchen table, watching her tv that never turns off, hoping her husband's war money will hold her through, and trying her best to understand the jargon they give her in the medicare plans. Doing her best, yes, but not what she should be doing.

So in theory...when I am old I will love. I will enjoy. I will smile. I will run. I will clean. I will be me. I will be loved in return. I will mow the lawn. I will laugh at my grandchildren playing. I will love every moment of my life.

Why wait until I'm old then. Why not smile, and love, and clean, and garden right now.

I am to be happy, no? Then this is where I am. In a position where I need to learn to not only live for today, but prepare for tomorrow, without losing what I had or have.

Exactly.

Signing off--Lauren

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