Quest

I went on a quest of body and mind this weekend. I'm not sure that I can be more specific than that, but you get the idea. On this quest, which I never would have believed could happen had I not experienced it myself, we traversed and conversed for what seemed like an eternity. Indeed, it seemed that this quest was my entire life all wrapped up into three hours of nothing but the present. It was a quest for identity and a place to call home. I saw the world as more real than I ever have, and for just a little bit, I didn't have to try. I could speak like a normal human being, even if some of the things that came out of my mouth made intermittently encountered strangers question my sanity and sobriety. But it's not like that doesn't happen all the time anyway. But I wasn't questioning myself, and I didn't have to think about every little thing. Everything was there, and everything was happy. In fact, I don't think I could have forced myself to think. The experience was freeing, and I'm willing to say that it changed my life, even if that change is as simple as having gained a new way of looking at things--a new interpretation on seemingly one-sided aspects of life that have been extant longer than mankind has had the ability to record them and reflect upon them. I call that simple? Well, I guess I'm not so sure about that anymore.
So where did we go?
The day started with my waking up to any empty bed and to the prospect of a seemingly empty day. When I told her that I wanted to go on an adventure, I never expected it to be the kind of adventure aforementioned. I thought we were just going shopping. We visited an old armchair on the Cathedral lawn before departing. After a rather financially decimating excursion to the Waterfront, we ventured home and decided that the trip just couldn't stop with that.
And it started with music and a few friends who knew the way. Then we found our own way as we began our quest, coming out of the basement and into a silent night, one of those Pittsburgh nights that denies its identity, the students having abandoned it for warmer, less stressful destinations, if only for a week of self-deluding relaxation.
We made contact with several companions along the way, completing the side quests as we knew we must. And just as in the great epics of yesteryear, we protagonists had no choice but to go forward, leaving these companions behind; for, in the end, each has his own quest to be faced in solitude. Even the two of us, as we eventually learned in the wee hours of the morning, must face our separate quest when the time comes. But tonight was the night upon which these two quests of ours just happened to overlap, and so we journeyed on into the night, into the desolation that is South Oakland in the midst of Spring Break.
We ended up on the front porch of a place that I've never hesitated to call home. It's been a while since I've had a place like that--a place that resonates with security, a place that truly speaks to my inner turmoil and calms the maelstrom in my soul.
And then there was the chair, still sitting there on the lawn. She went back the next day to find it gone.
So what answers did we find? Well, I think we found out pretty quickly that, maybe just for one night, home was wherever we needed to go next, even if that meant we needed to go absolutely nowhere. We obtained confirmation that the journey is way more important than the destination because, if you think about it, we really didn't end up anywhere, except right back where we started. But like I said, it's all about distance, not displacement. And perhaps the most ambiguous answer collected that evening...cold.purple.fuck
I remember lying in bed, just talking, as the hours ticked away and sleep failed to grace us with its presence, which we desired ever increasingly as the sun began to rise. I was finally able to confront some of my deepest fears, and the fact that I could communicate effectively for the first time in my life made the tears more welcome than any others that have fallen from my eyes. It's true that my life will never be the glamorous life, and I'll never have the Hollywood doc kind of thing going on. And much of what I do will go unnoticed and unappreciated, at least in the way that I think it should be. And I may disappoint all those people who have told me that I should have been the one to change the world. But there are other things that I'll get out of life that are way more important to me. I would trade that feeling of fame for the feeling of having saved a life--maybe a life no one else thought was worth saving. I'd trade a lot of things just to have that kind of meaning in my life, and that's the real reason I've decided on this career. And I don't think I've ever really been able to answer that question before. I don't think I've ever known why or how this could be so important to me. And now that I reflect upon this and all the other experiences of questioning and being so scared that I'm going to make the wrong decision, I finally get why it's right for me. I finally get that this is the future for which my entire life has been preparing me, and I know that I can and will do my job to the best of my ability--and to the best of everything else. And maybe I've known something more all along: It's not about the science at all.
"You'll never be great. But you will excel at doing ordinary things."
I never thought I'd be okay with that, and maybe I'm still not quite ready to accept it. But I'm beginning to realize how much more there is to life than being the best at something, or at least being recognized as the best. I'm beginning to realize that the ordinary things are what people need more than anything because anyone can live life without being great. Few people ever get to be great, and I think a lot of the people that we consider great fall short of that label more often than not. And maybe I'm so worried about this because of all the pressure that's been placed upon me to be great because everyone thinks that I'm the kind of person who can change the world for some reason. And maybe I will change the world, but I'm now understanding that I can do that in ways that aren't that great. I mean, no one really changes the world anyway. You can change the way you perceive the world and experience it, but it's always going to be the same world with the same problems. And if I can change the way I look at the world in one night, who's to say I can't do that for other people, even if those people never realize it until long after I am gone. And maybe I'll end up changing the world for myself.

And I never thought I'd say that I'm okay with being a brilliant and successful nobody.