there's barely time.

A few days ago in my English class, my professor read a passage from "Walden":

"...Not till we are completely lost, or turned round... do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he wakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

And this, perhaps more than any other reason, is why I am not so scared of my fast-approaching graduation date. When Zora Neale Hurston arrived in New York after having lived all her life in the rural South, she took that big step with the mantra "No job, no friends, and a lot of hope" playing over and over in her head. I plan on not planning anything except maybe a country, a vague understanding of the program I will be going on, and a place to sleep for the first few months. But if I get lost along the way, I will not be lost at all. I will be finding my way back with every move I make.

If there are several accepted modes of femininity, several ways that women are socially allowed to look at their lives in America, I cannot find my place in any of them. I don't feel comfortable taking a job I know I could get in New York and working until I get so stressed out that I have eight ulcers. I don't feel comfortable following in any man's footsteps. I don't feel right going home and being near my family, no matter what that means. I certainly am not ready to settle into eight years of graduate school. I am not a writer. Stop trying to make me a writer. Whatever job I want to assume when I have the experience to assume it has not yet been created. My father is an entrepreneur of sorts. He has his own consulting company, started a record label, created a motorcycle photography website, does whatever he wants.

I realize that those types of things only happen with time, and I am more than prepared to work hard toward an unknown goal for many years. Because I know that all of that work will lead me somewhere - will lead to slow incremental self-discovery.

So I plan on getting hopelessly lost before I find myself again. I am tired of people discouraging me from such ill-planned ideas. I look at the people who critique me, and I feel sorry for them. Because what they have in life makes them live, but it is only a means to an end, they are not truly happy with what they have made of themselves -- especially many of the women who criticize these ideas.

For a woman to stand up and refuse to assume her role as a future mother, future corporate ladder climber is a bit threatening, I think. I refuse to participate in a system that is inherently unequal. When I get back, maybe things will be different, maybe my perspective will have changed. But I am more stubborn than most people realize.