Round trip

Last night I returned from Wheaton. Coming home was something of a surreal process. The tiny threads that I'd spun during my 48 hour visit unraveled again as I rode in the back seat to the airport and made my way to A18. This always happens, but somehow it never fails to catch me off guard. I believed that this time would be easier: Fewer people left to see means fewer goodbyes, but somehow it doesn't work that way. There's a cost to returning, more significant than the $108.18 Southwest charges for its services.

Distance has a marvelous way of creating perspective. 600 miles takes only 1 hour 25 minutes gate-to-gate, but somehow it's enough. I hear with envy of K's dream of moving to NY and becoming a freelance author. G's art moves me to silence and wonder. The posters for H's new production prompt significant self-criticism. Have I done anything with myself in the last two years? J reminds me of other things, too. And so I return to Kansas, both shaken and stirred, frustrated with my life and frustrated with my frustration. Artists create, do they not? Writers write. Dancers dance. Readers read. I would claim to be many of these things, yet the actions denoting each are significantly and consistently absent from my life. I am an imposter, riding on the faded coattails of my collegiate enterprise and creativity.

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When I was in third grade, I memorized MLK Jr's famous speech: "I have a dream that one day..." I used to tell people that I wanted to be a rocket scientist, a lawyer, an English professor. Truth be told, I never wanted to be any of those things, but I needed something to tell them when asked. Faulkner, it turns out, was right afterall: Some words are merely shapes to fill a lack. The older I get and the more honest I become, the more glaringly that lack asserts itself. I have no "dream that one day..."; I have merely memorized the dreams of others. My father wants to be a muscician and filmmaker. My sister wants to write and open a bakery. L is off to graduate school. R is an actor. C will be a wife and mother. It's not so much that I'm unhappy with my current life as much as that I despise not knowing what that life should be. (This is, of course, beyond the rather self-evident directive to "Love God and make him known.") I am tired of watching everyone else follow their dreams. I am tired of not having a dream. And I am tired of being too lazy to find it.

An old friend sent me an out-of-the-blue email last year. "Are you happy?" he asked. I wasn't sure how to reply. But what is happiness, anyway? And how is that different from contentment? Perhaps contentment is a choice, a decision one makes to truly BE where one IS. It's about being present, about widening one's stance by an extra foot and saying, "Yes, this is where I will stand." Does contentment necessarily lead to happiness? Possibly, but I'm afraid to give it a fair chance. Contentment seems a bit too close to resignation, to settling. If I agree to be content, I may get too comfortable. I may stay here forever. Is that really such a bad thing?

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To the bright east she flies, / Brothers of Paradise / Remit her home, / Without a change of wings, / Or Love's convenient things, / Enticed to come. / Fashioning what she is, / Fathoming what she was, / We deem we dream — / And that dissolves the days / Through which existence strays / Homeless at home.
--Emily Dickinson

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No flying away now. There is work to be done.