What To Think

Sometimes, I can't decide if I'm not blogging (or rather, not blogging anything particularly interesting or relevant) because I'm too busy or because I don't want to plummet down the dark, jagged, winding, cavernous rabbit hole that thinking about important things like life will cause.

Because the truth is that life is incredibly eventful currently, and I don't even know if it would be morally decent to attempt a blog post of it all. It almost... I don't know, trivializes it. Turns it into something tangible or comprehendible.

Not to say I've gone skydiving or met my favorite actor or won the Nobel Prize recently. But I've thought some very profound thoughts, said a few profound things, and felt a couple profound feelings. And that deserves, if nothing else, a nod to the universe in 12-point font form.

I guess the thing that everyone seems to be leaning towards me, hand cupped around their ears for, is graduation. Like... how am I feeling? Am I excited? Am I sad? Everyone's so expectant for my feelings that it's subconsciously drained me of conscious emotion towards the whole affair. Like... yes. It's happening. Okay. I'll take Next Conversation Topic for 400, please.

I mean, I haven't even intrinsically grasped my own emotions on the subject. Maybe if the whole world would give me a chance to, I could articulate something presentable to respond to other people. As it is, I'm giving the standard, typical high school answer of "I'm ready to be done," which is true of course, but not a true answer to the question. It satisfies the asker though, and leaves me biting my lip and wondering... hold on. How do I feel about it?

I've been meaning to write some advice to Freshman Abby, though, and perhaps that will help. And watching a few darling eighth graders that I know prepare to captain the churning waters of public secondary education makes Subconscious Me stretch out my hand and open my mouth to call out some fragment of wisdom (though nothing comes yet), so I'd better work on that whole articulation thing sometime soon.

I should really try and fit something more thought-provoking into this post. Right now it's shaping up like one of those TV dinners that has so much potential to be your new favorite thing ever but then ends up being underheated and bland.

Okay. Well.

Here's something I've thought about recently: We are alive to take risks. If we never risk our hearts, our preconceptions, our physical health, our mental sanity, our personal hygiene, and so forth every once in a while, what's the point of living?

But there's a flip side. The idea behind risk-taking is not that you're brave enough to do it, but that you're doing it mentally prepared to deal with whatever consequences, unfathomably good or horrifically bad, that arise. It's not saying "Why not, I'm young and alive" and promising that this will be your only time getting high or breaking into some abandoned building or pretending to relish some drunk recklessness that is secretly making you cringe.

It's when you're with your best friend for the last time in probably years and you realize there is no good reason why you shouldn't go streaking at midnight behind a row of houses. Or when you're looking at your favorite person for the hundredth time and figuring out that it's not going to take a hundred and one for you to blurt out in pure, Shakespearean poetry why you love them. It's being with the people and places you love most and knowing that carrying on with the same old crap isn't going to do anyone or anything justice.

The last thing I want is to look back on anything and wonder if only. 

So at least until I leave for Wenham, Massachusetts on August 21st, I'll be taking some risks that hopefully shock Freshman Abby and rather impress her.

Cheers, folks. (I can't believe I just said that, but try and pretend it works.)