Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

My laptop has exploded. This means that until I get a new computer (probably not for another 2 weeks or so), I probably won't be posting a great deal on anything that has any depth to it. This is not because of a lack of access but rather, because I am now obliged to use the computer downstairs and it's rather hard to think deeply when my parents are watching "G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra" at a house-shaking decibel. Rise of Cobra, by the way, is a very slick action film; well worth the watch if you're into that kind of stuff - but hardly conducive to posting.

That being said, I am going to make an attempt anyway.

I've always talked about how great it is to be young and every so often, I make an attempt to explain why this is so. And I do this on a fairly regular basis because I think there are many many things that make being young better than being old. I mean, I understand most of these things on a subconscious level, but to encompass all my feelings on the subject in one post is a fairly tall task and one that I can never seem to do. Recently, my mind, for some reason or another, has been slowly zeroing in on one point that I think I can now express clearly enough to turn into a blog post.

Actually, I think I know how I came about this realization. I was thinking about what I am going to say in my University Master Class next Thursday and I wanted to bring out the concept of finding out what's important to you. And as I thought about this idea, I also thought about this quotation by Alec Baldwin about music:

"Popular music has an emotional-intelligence quotient that's geared much toward younger people. It's all about 'You left me. Why did you leave me? I still love you. I tried so hard to stop loving you.' And it's like, well, I relate to that, I just don't want to think about that. When you're younger, you want to wallow in it. When you get older, you still love the person, and wonder why they don't love you. You just have other things to do."

Alec Baldwin is being a realist. But I realized, after reading this quotation, exactly what it is about growing old that makes me so depressed. Not coincidentally, I've also been thinking a lot about my future lately and how I'm not 100% sure I want to be a teacher.

You see, for much of our young lives, we have the great privilege of CHOOSING what's important to us. I once talked to Grant about putting things in perspective and how when you were in grade 5 and you had a crush on that cute girl in your grade, that was the most important thing to you, at the time. And we have this tendency to "put things in perspective" by feeling like in "the grand scheme of things," that silly little crush wasn't very important. But that's simply not true! It's one of these great ironies of life that when we attempt to put things in perspective, we very often ended up skewing them OUT of perspective. Maybe in the grand scheme of your life, that crush wasn't very important, but AT THAT TIME, it was the most significant thing in your life! That girl in your class - she was alpha and omega. And just because it seems insignificant to your current self doesn't mean that it was any less important to you when you were 10.

And that's the thing about being young! At every point in your youth, you have the freedom, time, and energy to not only realize what's important to you, but to pursue them as well. When I was 7, I loved baseball; so I played baseball. When I was 16, girls were central to my life; so I spent a lot of my free time doing things that related to that department. And Alec Baldwin is absolutely correct. When we're young, we get to wallow in the things that are important to us. We get to live them; experience them; devote all our energies to them - because those were the things we cared about and we were free to make them central to our lives.

As we grow old, however, we no longer have this freedom. In Alec Baldwin's words, we have "other things to do". Other things, such as paying the rent and putting food on the table - basic needs that we are now forced to consider "important". And unlike years of our youth, these things will never go away. Once you become an adult, "economic survival" will always be the most important thing to you - but not because that's what you truly want to do or what fulfills you spiritually/emotionally, rather, because you have no choice in the matter. If you want to pursue something else that's truly important to you, you can't devote all your time to it like you do when you're young. Hell, you might not even be able to devote any time at all, depending on the type of job you have.

When you're young and you don't have to worry about feeding yourself and putting a roof over your head, you have the freedom to devote your life to something that you love or that you consider important. Alec Baldwin is trying to be a realist about the whole thing and while I understand his sentiment, it actually depresses me horribly. Can you imagine being so worn out and drained by the daily rigours of adult responsibility that things like love, music, and revolution lose their ability to move you? Can you imagine being rejected by someone and thinking "Well, at least it's not like I got fired from my job" instead of, "The first star you see may not be a star; I'm not your star"? Or meeting someone and having to put him/her on the sideburner while you focus on getting your lesson plans done instead of letting yourself be enveloped by the feeling of, "When I'm with you, I feel like I could die and that would be alright... alright." How can people bear sacrificing things that move them for the sake of staying alive? I mean, I get that staying alive (roof over head, food on table, etc) is important but - how can that be fulfilling?

I worry about this. Constantly. Especially in relation to my profession. I thought to myself, "I don't know if I truly want to be a teacher," and then realized, "As of right now, I don't really have a choice." Because it's getting to the point where what's important to my life might have to be put on the backburner to make room for what's necessary for my survival. And once "survival" becomes the main theme in life, cue existential crisis. I'll be sure to post details about that crisis when it happens so check back with me in a year or so.