During high school, I developed a weird little ritual, which I enacted every time an in-class essay was assigned. Generally speaking, as soon as the assignment was on the board or handed out, my classmates would begin scribbling furiously. At the time, I think we all knew that the exercise of in-class essay writing was part preparation, part adrenaline, and part bullshit. Fortunately for most of us, we were consummate bullshit artists. As they began writing, though, I would just sit. I don’t even remember if I would read the assignment, but I do remember the act of simply doing nothing. And one thought would cross my mind:
What if I just didn’t do this?
It was an uncharacteristically rebellious thought for me—especially in light of the fact that my favorite classes in high school were the classes in which these in-class essays were assigned. For whatever reason, though, I always felt the need to sit still for a few minutes and consider my alternatives. I knew in the most literal sense that no, the world would not end if I did not pick up my pen and begin to wax pretentious about the phallic significance of this or that (one teacher in particular had the reputation of giving an A to anyone who could find anything remotely penis-like in a passage of text). Many students in my school, though, myself included, believed in some sense that some world would in fact fall of its axis or explode in a flurry of singed Hemingway pages if we did not pass muster. Personal Armageddon is a miraculous motivator. After all, a paper wasn’t a paper: a paper was a grade, a grade was a transcript, a transcript was a college acceptance or rejection, and college… well, we didn’t really know what college was short of “monumentally important” for some obscure reason. Our priorities may have been completely wacked out, but it wasn’t a coincidence that our school could brag about a clean sweep of the Cal universities and Ivies alike—no matter if their graduates were emotional and adrenal messes when we got out.
It is in this context that my few moments of perspective were particularly out of character. Needless to say, though, after I took those few minutes, my adrenaline would kick in and I would begin writing frantically. Alas for missed opportunities.
My oldest sister told me once that there is a very well marked border between brave and stupid. She was referring specifically to an ill-advised bike ride I took once that left me hypothermic in the fetal position on my floor, but I think she’d be willing to extend the statement to a broader context. I would, however, pose a question: if you aren’t near that well-marked border, if there are no landmarks (“Welcome to Stupid—Population: Regrettably High”), how do you know when the ground you’re metaphorically standing on is brave or stupid?
All of my in-class essay exercises in latent bravery came back to me this weekend while I was on the road. A large family gathering had necessitated a car-swap scenario that had me driving my grandfather’s SUV back out to their house in Lexington. Not owning a car myself, the act of driving has become a rare high for me—it hints at an autonomy and independence I don’t ordinarily have. I have borrowed that particular SUV, an ancient and noisy gas-guzzler, many times to drive north back to school to ski or see friends. And on this recent Sunday night, I found myself in that car again, windows down and radio up, pointing north on I-95. And that traitorous thought came back after years of dormancy:
What if I just didn’t do this?
What if I didn’t take the exit towards my grandparents’ house? What if I just struck out north and left everything behind? The idea was as intoxicating as it was implausible.
In a weird way, over the last couple of months, my thinking has changed. It’s not so much the where anymore that is the draw—it’s the act of going and the fact of gone that you leave in your wake. Another adult who’s been at this longer than I have told me recently that maybe it is brave to be out on my own, working every day, not really liking my job: doing the hard thing every day, even though it’s hard, is brave. As I hit the turn signal on Sunday night with an emphatic swear, I didn’t feel brave. I felt like a coward as I exited towards Lexington, and the feeling of freedom stayed on I-95 and headed north without me.
I used to be an exclusively goal-oriented person. The promise of where I wanted to go was the fuel that got me there. After a couple rough years of economic realities, though, my intended destination is starting to waver. All sorts of questions are invading and eroding my certainty, the most corrosive of which is: What if what I think I want will not actually make me happy?
In high school, I drank the cool aid and pushed myself to the point of breaking—but I got what I wanted: the acceptance letter to the school that had fueled me the whole way. No matter what I was thinking at the beginning of class, I always turned in the essay at the end. Now, with my faith in my goals faltering, I’m stalling on the way there.
The high school chapter of conventional wisdom more or less worked for me. The twenty-something chapter says that you get a job, you pay your bills, you apply to grad school. Essentially, you do your time and work towards what you want. Sometimes I wonder, though, if what I want takes into consideration the common models of wisdom, or if what I want is trapped inside the common models.
Yes, it would be stupid to abandon job, apartment, and possessions and pretty much commit grand theft auto with my grandfather’s ’95 Explorer. Perhaps bravery for the sake of bravery is stupid. The ‘bravery’ that tempts me always seems to be reactionary: I want to use the convention in my life as a push-off to launch myself in the other direction. It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that what I’m launching myself into will make me happy, or that the act of launching makes me brave. So I always turn in the essay, I always exit towards Lexington on Sunday nights, and I am praying that whatever qualifies staying the course—bravery or stupidity—will eventually be worth it.
It is comforting to know also that north isn't going anywhere.
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