Topic: Rambling
The other night, I was talking with a friend about our varying plans for our separate lives. Her plan seemed well thought out, and she thought the same of mine.
This is all well and good, to a point. I looked back upon my plans, such carefully laid things, and realized how empty it was. It was not devoid of hard work and effort by any stretch of the imagination. But it was empty none-the-less. There is no other human in those plans but myself. Really lonely and empty when you think about it.
The plan? Finish up and graduate with my B.S. in Computer Science, take six months to a year-and-a-half off, apply to grad schools, get a PhD, and teach/research. That is the plan, in it's whole with the extra words of explanation removed for sake brevity.
"Well, that's not too bad," you might say. "It's full, but fulfilling at the same time." And you'd be partially correct. It is intellectually fulfilling. But something is missing, the crucial something that I find common in so many web-logs that I trawl across late at night observing raw humanity.
There are no others, and no room for them, in that plan. That plan is the plan of a man who is looking to spend years by himself in the man-woman emotional sense.
I will have my goal, I know that very well, there is very little that I am not capable of. But what of it? So I will have two fancy documents certifying first my general knowledge of the subject then near complete mastery. I will be successful in that material aspect of things. But things are just things. Other humans are more important than petty little objects.
"But you'll still be young, you'll have your whole life then to find further happiness," you reply. True and false: I will be young, but will I have any of that human connection machinery outside of persuasion skills to keep grant money flowing?
Maybe I should backtrack some, for those not fully caught up on the discussion. I have spent a long time alone. The majority of my life, and take that as a statement of truth. Interaction with one's immediate family (especially when one's immediate family ranges in ages from 12 to 41 years older than one's self) is only a small part and cannot substitute for interaction among ones peers, especially those of the opposite sex.
Now that we are all more or less up to speed, let us resume.
I fear that my capacity for those parts of myself, the loving and caring parts, the parts that have once or twice over-powered the rational dynamo that is my normal self, is diminishing. I find myself farther and farther from understanding those strange displays of affection I see as I walk down the street between classes. Even my own memories of such things have become remote. And this is only after a few meager years from those memories.
So what will happen five years from now? Will I still even be able to feel those things? To respond to those things? Or will it all have withered and faded?
It would be a sad and terrible trade off. Five years of hard work for what is looking to be at least 70 years where my course is the one I choose. But if I feel little or nothing for others, no matter how hard they try for me, what good is that life? I would not subject another to give and give for nothing in return. I have felt that situation enough myself to know that it is a horrible existence. So it would be a lonely and meandering 70 years. That's a long time folks, nearly three quarters of a century, time enough to span three or four generations of people. Seventy years ago, Nazis were in control of Germany, Stalin was in power, and the United States was struggling with the Great Depression. Does that help put scale upon the enormity of that span? Now imagine treading down that path alone.
To not be able to feel like that, to feel those feelings of two humans that love each other, would to be as broken as any sociopath or schizophrenic. I'd be less human than any given person walking beside me on the sidewalk.
It is a fearful thing. And if I knew for certainty that by forsaking the PhD for a few years, or entirely, I could avoid that, I would forsake that degree in a heartbeat. I may have only a somewhat completed education, but it would be worth it to be a full man.
I don't blame the others in my life for these things. This is the course that the universe traveled upon based upon our mutual choices. The others have moved on, and so have I. But while they found themselves warm places, I found myself deep in a cold and sanitary hall. I hold no jealousy for this, only my choices brought me here, so this is of my own doing, and it is the thing I will have to abide by. The hall is much larger than I can perceive, and there may be something on the far end, or it may go on forever. My only recourse is to continue to walk forward, step after step, mile after mile. I will not give up where I stand.
Does that make sense? Have I cleanly articulated my fear? I think I have. It runs deep: it took root years ago in my childhood and has continued unchecked since.
And now, on an unrelated note, I must get started on some homework that is due tomorrow.