What I Want

[This was written a week ago]

As we sat and drove tonight and I looked out at all the suburbs flashing by, all the shopping centers, and gated townhouses and endless tail lights, I realized something: I could never live in a place like that. I will never live in the cultural and intellectual monotony (even oppression) that is the suburbs. The uniformity depresses me: every house exactly the same, every shopping center housing exactly the same stores under different names, the same small-sized sedans driven by anonymous faces.
I’ve said this many times, but never before, after visiting my aunt and uncle earlier today, has it been this clear: I want to be different. I saw the life they lived, how happy they were about their small townhouse, and the mall down the street and all the other townhouses surrounding them. It made me sick. Under the superficial surface, there was a frightening lack of substance: where were the books in their house? Where was the library in the exurban town? Nowhere to be found, I am afraid.
I saw two facets of silent desperation this weekend: four people slipping forever into oblivion. Two old, two young. Four lives wasted. For the old two, there is nothing to be done. They can live in their stuffy, smoke-ridden house drinking and smoking their lives away until they rot. For them, there is nothing that can be done. For the younger two, why will they not be different? They think they are unique, but in reality, are like millions upon millions of fellow Americans. I could never live this way. In what useful occupation are they serving mankind? I do not know.
At times I worry that I will be like all those that came before me, and I have every right to be worried. The majority of humanity lives like this. Look what I wrote in my English paper:
The fear of failure,
Of never writing the great American novel,
Of never exploring the world,
Of never doing or writing anything of great importance.
Do not worry: everything we do, every day we walk the earth, is the greatest success.
This is in the style of Walt Whitman, and it is complete nonsense. Of course I worry about preserving my legacy and my memory, for what other purpose is there to live? Actually, many others I suppose, but this is extremely important. I want to go away for a long time to a land I have never seen before and live there and be happy. I want to write poetry and stories and novels and see the world and play soccer under the floodlights and have friends and go out to the pub and have a laugh on Friday night and forget about tomorrow and take walks in the wilderness Saturday afternoons and make love to a girl I love under the stars and stand back and see the world for what it really is and laugh at peoples’ worries for I am far above their worries. I want to cry when I’m sad, laugh when I’m happy, hold someone tight when I’m scared, not be afraid to take a chance and fear nothing. This is what I want. Will I achieve it all? I do not know.
But tonight is only one night in (hopefully) thousands, and I cannot do everything in one night. Tonight I can only dream. Tomorrow is a new opportunity.