Senior year in college: one foot in college, one foot already out the door. With that ominous graduation date looming so closely, every decision ahead seems to take on new gravity, at times unbearable weight. More than ever, you are aware that the decisions you make will change the course of your life. You try to avoid thinking in these overly dramatic terms, but it's nearly impossible to resist the urge. You are ready to leave your college years behind, sometimes you are even eager to be charting your own course, but the ugly truth is that uncertainty looms ahead.
On the precipice of today and tomorrow, of certainty and possibility...I am reminded of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand and its first passage introducing Howard Roark:
Howard Roark laughed...He stood naked at the edge of a cliff...the world seemed suspended in space, an island floating on nothing, anchored to the feet of the man on the cliff...
He knew that the days ahead would be difficult. There were questions to be faced and a plan of action to be prepared. He knew that he should think about it. He knew also that he would not think, because everything was clear to him already, because the plan had been set long ago, and because he wanted to laugh...
These rocks, he thought, are here for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them. (omissions mine)
To feel so vitally young and empowered, as though the world is at your feet. Surely, it is an intoxicating feeling that comes over you at times as you look ahead to the unmolded years. But most other times, probably, your intoxication is of the OH (alcohol) variety and mixed with a good dose of anxiety. Howard Roark is an egocentric, incompassionate, nature-plundering, and most importantly, fictional character. Nobody is as certain or cocksure as he, or so you think. Then you look around and see your overachieving peers look so certain about their futures, so certain about their respective paths. How can you be so goddamn certain!? your innards scream.
Nevertheless, you forge ahead as you must. But, as you begin applying to graduate schools or to jobs, as you take that GRE or MCAT or LSAT, you realize how little control you actually have, how little power you exercise in deciding your own future. The resume and cover letter that you so meticulously crafted sit in a pile of hundreds of others, just waiting to be tossed aside by some unforgiving hand. Or worse yet, you wonder if that e-mail you sent sits in the "Spam" folder of your potential employer.
And then there is the nagging idea in the back of your mind that you are in your prime and that you are not living your every day to the fullest. These precious years should not be spent in a state of suspended worry, not in a cubicle pushing paper either, but living. The fierce urgency of NOW calls you, Carpe-fucking-Diem, or more eloquently, in Joyce's words: "To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on!"
Every fiber of your being calls on you to partake in life's feast, but you've got to watch your weight, you've got to think about the future and your career and what is best, how to optimally allocate your resources.............................
But you are not alone. The Dude abides. And I take comfort in that.
[to be continued...]
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