Take a deep breath!

Oh my gosh, grad school.  I'm here, I have arrived.  And I am scared stiff.  Moreover, I'm unsure if this, here, at this time is the right choice for me.  Now, where did I put that damn panic button?  I'm sure it's around here somewhere.  Yet another thing for me to search for, as if my true path wasn't enough.  But then, what is the "true" self anyway?  Some damn thing Buddha made up most likely.  

But - continuing on, if I have learned anything over the course of my undergraduate work, and into the beginning of my graduate studies, it is that "truth" and "self" are hard to find.  And it's likely that those qualities are more slippery than anything else, because those ideas are so plastic: constantly shifting, changing and being reinvented by my subconscious.  Truth and self are much like a flying fish - slipper and damn near impossible to catch.  Hence, the flying fish bistro.  What would I even do if I ever get to that utopia of complete knowledge of who I am, what I "want", which is such an all-encompassing term that I don't think I can get my mind around it anyway.  

I read somewhere once someone's personal viewpoint of knowledge, and it still bounces around in my head when I'm having trouble with the fact that the more I learn, the more I understand that I know nothing at all.  This author/deep thinker wrote, "My personal feeling is that once we know everything we need to know in this lifetime, our time here is done.  After that, we die."  That thought is both a comfort and a curse because (yay me!) I realize that I know only a very small percentage of what I feel I should, and I have a long way to go throughout the course of my life.  The curse is that this thought sneaks up and taps me on the shoulder at different points, when I am in doubt, or I think perhaps thoughts, actions, ideals are nothing more than an exercise in futility: What is the point of all this?  All this education, all these deep thoughts, all of these dives into the icy waters of self exploration?  

The answer? Ha!  I don't know.  But my theory is that we of the word obsessed, language obsessed, thought-oriented minds are reshaping, rethinking and rewording what it is that defines "us" as a whole.  There are those around us who don't question much, and who are content to sit around, play golf or the Wii and not worry about what our reality really is, and what "it" is all about.  These blissfully ignorant people can sleep at night and feel that their work is important, and they probably have some feeling of satisfaction.  I wonder what that feels like.  Don't get me wrong, there are times when I have a EUREKA! moment and think I have grasped what it is to be a person, contributing completely, to this world at this time, and that I may have something important to say about what surrounds us.  In that moment I am Yeats, I am Morrison, I am Angelou.  I am a social commentator of the utmost import.

But then that moment pops like a cartoon speech bubble and I fall back into the abyss of nothingness.  Though, I think I misspoke there.  Nothingness suggests futility, and gives the idea that I have given up on these ideas that swirl around in my head.  That is something I have not done - I just haven't figured out how to articulate, organize, or put these contemplations to use in the most effective way.  

My hope is that grad school is a good venue for the organization of these thoughts and contemplations, but I still have my reservations that perhaps this fight is a futile one.  I am keeping an open mind.