“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I don’t think you can measure life in terms of years. I think longevity doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with happiness. I mean happiness comes from facing challenges and going out on a limb and taking risks. If you’re not willing to take a risk for something you really care about, you might as well be dead.” - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Northern Lights, 1993
I picked up this quote in a random Google/eBay search (a very LEGAL search while at work, not to mention), and I must say, it has triggered yet so much emotions over the few remaining hours I had at work. So much so, in fact, that I flooded Ger with such thoughts while walking in fort Bonifacio waiting for a cab to stop and pick us up.
She said she’s more of a “moving on” person. While I stay and linger about the what could have beens, and what could be done, she focuses on what will be done and what she can do in the future. That, in a nutshell, separates us and yet makes us come together; or at least admittedly, something I have been holding on to. If I’m negative, that at least I have the positive pole to constantly hit me in the head.
This morning, I was talking to her about going back to school. Amazingly even after spending some time working I feel that the workforce is nothing but a simple means to an end, but school is still something revered. It is, if we look at it, the breeding ground for dreams and aspirations; of common thoughts boosted to amplified ramblings; from freshmen to arrogant somebodies. It is in college that you are given that unpretentious make up that, yes, you can do it. Corporate shenanigans prove us otherwise, of course, but till that part, you KNOW you CAN be somebody. And you will start plotting on what will be done and what you can do in the future.
Or is this really how it’s supposed to go? Why is it that I may be stuck in the recesses on my university days, when a lot of people enjoy what they’re doing now while earning money? Could I be missing something?
Could it be passion?
So Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider may have nailed it in, and bless their souls because I don’t really know who they are. But maybe, that’s the reason for staying behind, for living wishing there could be more. For all the wishing that I am back to the grounds which I feel most alive. Because maybe then, I feel I had a sense of purpose. Because then, I know what I want to do, what my dreams and aspirations were. Now, I don’t. I don’t have the risks I want. I can’t stay arrogant over something I don’t really like—it’ll soon feel empty. Out of everything else, I am left here—I can’t move on, because I don’t know how, or where to move on, what to be done, and what I can do. I am simply stuck wondering about my answer to the questions of the year:
What do I want? What am I living for? What do I really care about? What is the why of all this?
And I know that’s the hardest question to answer.