Starting with a Road Trip

Aiiiieeee!!!!

Some part of me is always screaming out. Restless.

Being on the road both helps and makes it worse. I just got a speeding ticket in Texas. Never fun in a vehicle with NY license plates. The last time I got pulled over in Texas two people got arrested and I spent the day trying to get them out of jail.

Finding out what makes you genuinely happy seems to me be one of the hardest and most worthwhile things you could possibly spend your time doing. I mean, what else is there really? The quest for power? What a waste, you’re going to die. Doctrinal obedience to religious decree? Sorry, but any god who doesn’t want his creations to love themselves and discover happiness is no god that I want. To me, whatever supernatural god-type thing that might be out there would have to measure our lives in terms of how well we explored ourselves and enjoyed the time we’ve had.

The big issue then is how to find what makes you happy. And that one is pretty fucking hard, if not impossible. Forgetting the fact that we all change, that what makes us happy now probably won’t be exactly what we want ten years from now. Think about how much crap in our modern lives tries to force us to believe it knows what we want. Parents, schools, friends, tv, commercials push us to accept this or that view. Have this job, focus on this subject, buy this piece of shit.

I just saw a line of people down an entire block waiting to go into a phone store to buy an iPhone. I mean, I’m sure they’re the coolest thing that has ever happened, but waiting on line for hours for a fucking phone? How did that become such a priority?

The thing is, any of them could be right, Maybe you really should become a doctor, study English, or buy an iPhone. But as long as your reason for doing it is someone else’s, is from someone else, you’ll never understand how it fits in to what you really need. You have to reject what you’ve been told to believe in order to be able to start over and find out what you believe. And it might be the same thing, completely different, or some of both, but at least it will be your reasons.

If you don’t explore your reasons, how can you ever learn any more about yourself? And if you aren’t learning about yourself, you’re not growing, which means you’re dying. And that’s a terrible way to live.

Maybe you can never fully understand what is needed to make you happy. But the pursuit of figuring that out, of figuring yourself out, is probably the most worthwhile thing you can do with your life.