Realization

It is a strange thing, coming to the realization that the course of your life is wholly uninteresting to most people, even those close you you. I got the sort of difficult sounding major that people would sometimes "oooh" at when I was asked it at parties. They would say "That must have been really hard" or "You must be really smart". Not always but sometimes. Frequently enough. And the thing is, while I don't think I coasted by any means, I feel like I cheated the system. It has been less than a year since I graduated, mediocre grades but who reads the GPA anyways, heart set (perhaps not by my own volition) on graduate school and now my interest in the field is almost completely gone. Whether or not it is true I feel like I have forgotten everything I learned. As if the information I spent so much time acquiring  memorizing, searing into my mind just floated away only to be left with a piece of paper and some rapidly diminishing memories. My former professors had little invested in me, there is no one telling me what to do and now I have to decide my own path.

I thought this anxiety would have ended with college. I had a deep fear around the middle of second year around choosing my major. As if by turning in that paperwork, taking the required classes, jumping through the hoops I would be irrevocably setting the rest of my life into motion. This has, after all, not proved to be the case. I wanted pretty badly to attain some sort of prestige (that dirty work, originally a slur) and it didn't take me long (then again...maybe too long) to realize that no one cared. No one I told could care less where or how much I worked, the "oooh"s were so fleeting and in many cases either alienated those that asked or made me seem pretentious. I feel now that as a child I was indoctrinated with this notion that the path you choose with your life can have these vast implications  that your family will be hurt if you do not live up to their expectations and, most vile and reprehensible of all, there is some reward for ascending the ladder, for trying.

But no one cares. The social gold gained by having a high position is, upon any close inspection, revealed as false. The years wind in and out, the weeks winnow into us, the days repeat and repeat, morning coming with a vengeance and evening inevitably finds us burned out and drunk. We achieve nothing. The homeless and refugee adapt to their positions, the wealthy and powerful still find something to complain about. Regardless we are always human, with the ineluctable desires and needs and shames and come along with that particular state.