The After-Life

(To Be Edited)

Dancing. It's something I do. Tonight, I met lots of new people, and enjoyed the old - avoided the less experienced dancers, and appreciated the admiration of the elders present. Most of whom fear knocking out their titanium hips if we dance too close to them. (A bunch of us young-uns carpool, and it's ballroom and 50/60s but we throw in a lot of swing, if you care.)

On the ride home I talked to a girl, N, who confirmed to me from her experience something I've been suspicious of a while. Something that makes more sense of the picture of reality after college than the one painted for me and swallowed by me. Something closer to practice than theory. Something...a lot less pretty. That thing is that graduating from college is not easy.

A friend of mine (D) recently realized that it's not going to be about getting into the career D wants to the rest of D's life, but finding some way to get by, and ideally be in a pleasant location.

If I lower my standard of expectation for life post-college, lower in a sense at least - by not expecting everything to work out the way I want it to, and in the time I want it to - I run a chance of being happy. Being free to be happy.

There's a lot of adjustment, which naturally includes pain and struggle. The first challenge is looking for a way to sustain yourself, the second eliminates existential crisis no. 1, that is, by realizing you don't have to find the one rut - excuse me, path - you'll forever continue in, but that anything will do.

Up til now it's been you following others' decisions for the large percentage of what comes your way. Even if it's not a conscious obedience to direction, you hark back to what someone told you is a good idea to do when such and such comes up. Not that we haven't learned to think for ourselves - sure, sure, but I haven't learned to think for myself that I can be content in just any given situation. And that's what (according to N) is about to present itself to me. In contrast to what 'they' say, and 'in yo face' to the American dream: you CAN'T do whatever you want, the world is NOT at your fingertips. I suppose it's an optimistic mentality. Duly appreciated. But it's not the final say.

So learn to enjoy the process. The getting there. That's what I'm hearing from all directions. Biggest post-Cartesian lie no. 1: only product matters. (Extrapolate that.)

Du. Das Leben ist schwer. Life is hard. Like playing all 7 verses of Jesus Loves Me for a baby's funeral. But then it's glorious. Like teaching autodidactic 7-yr-olds introductory piano, like pushing yourself and your partner to dance the last 5 exhausted minutes of an evening. Hauptsache du lebst - the main point is, you're alive.

Hey - if i can eat lychee, and dance my soul out some weekends with people who are super - even if I end up getting my money by making male and female corn plant parts to make love, - that could work, for now.