In Search of Time To Be Discovered (or Rememberance of Things Ahead)

Dear Chris,

I find it interesting that you are OK speaking of such things so openly on this blog. While I know our readership is non-existent (and I think it would be nice if it stayed that way for a bit longer, honestly, although I'm not sure why), I am still surprised that you would be willing to let the world know such personal things.

It's funny, because I never worried that I wasn't enough, perhaps simply because I knew I wasn't. In fact, towards the end I guess it was the opposite way around...I don't like admitting that, not for me, but for her. In any case, I think I am more driven to do things outside of relationships, as much for improving myself as impressing others.

When I think of immersing myself in a host of activities, I don't necessarily think of doing it to cover up any faults. I don't see it as a blue tarp duct taped over the hole in my side door car window. Instead, I see it as an entirely new window, not just a cover. When I think of immersing myself in things, it is to make me a better person. A little bit to make me a more interesting person, but I think most importantly to make myself a more passionate person.

As our past conversations have detailed, this issue of passion has been plaguing me since, well, since Equus. Sometimes I feel a strong sympathy with the psychiatrist, as I assume Peter Shaffer wanted us all to. So here I am, a machine of a scholar, doing school, which I know and which I love, but at times I feel it is all that I do. Which doesn't give me that much depth as a person. I mean, being able to do, and doing, both science and humanities, is depth, but it's not particularly interesting. It doesn't really make you stand out in a crowd, or an interview, or a bar. But being able to talk about Kung Fu, or Capoeira, or even some of the volunteer work I'm looking into this summer, that's something you can talk about. Will it become passion? I hope so.

So maybe the contrast between deep growth and superficiality isn't actually that sharp, at least in this case. Perhaps it's that I just don't feel as panicked as your tale seems to indicate you were. I see my exploration of other things as a long progressive trek to figuring out what I want out of life and what life wants out of me.

As for impressing the fairer sex, I vacillate wildly between confidence that someone will like me for who I am or not at all and the knowledge that I can be bigger, better, faster, more interesting, and more impassioned than I currently am. Obviously the former attitude is favored, but sometimes I worry. So far my four days in BHouse have led to a sense of calm in this department, as I focus on these other things and pure camaraderie with my housemates.

I am interested in your comment about relationships making you self-destructive. I know you meant it in the case of dissecting every potential misstep rendering you an impotent wreck (hopefully not literally). But I think, no matter what the reasons, what you managed to accomplish in order to impress a boy, is more impressive than you could have ever imagined, and allowed you to take advantage of life in more ways than you ever could have otherwise.

I know there's a natural avoidance of corny phoenix references, but the thing is they're rather poignant. You do have to burn a little to be reborn. Nietzsche makes a big point of it. I know personally not getting Section Leader was good in the long run because it was this type of burning that I needed to grow in new directions, or even just to make me that much more fireproof.

Part of me fears that I will render myself too busy too actually have a relationship, but these things have a way of working themselves out, so I'm not going to worry too horribly much.

So, a word on this loneliness, as Joe mutters to himself next to me about dimensions of his Drop Team business. In high school, I buried my loneliness with schoolwork. But schoolwork wasn't really an adequate replacement: the goal of schoolwork was that I was working towards a greater end, which was a chance to escape my lonely surroundings and start anew at Yale. So that kind sublimation doesn't really work.

What really is necessary is a self-sustaining lifestyle that has no escapist goal in mind. No light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing that is worked towards. I think having that kind of life is really the only way to escape loneliness.

But then again, running from loneliness perhaps is one of the greatest things we can do to make us into better people. I think of a book I have heard of recently but have not had the chance to read yet: "How Proust Can Change Your Life." A link leads to a brief summary, which sounds quite enticing:

http://librarylink.regent.edu/?p=149

Perhaps I will read this book. So much to do this summer.

I might have a counter-post soon, or I might just go to bed. I'm a working man now.

Love,

Alan