"Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?"
- Henry David Thoreau
I often find myself, when looking back at wide sections of life, doing as Steve Jobs says and connecting the dots. You see so clearly how bad things led to good things and you understand better the fact that you could not have organized any of the mess. It is all very exciting, and it always gets me thinking that if I could see these things in advance -- one cosmic moment of foresight -- I probably would want to; how neat would it be to walk into a bar and get a flash of yourself kissing some beautiful stranger now on a bar stool, two weeks down the road on a park bench? When I say this I know it's best we don't get those sneak peaks, because the mystery and the uncertainty is as much a part of life as anything in the world and you can't mess with things so important.
When I think of those cosmic moments, perhaps the greatest one took place four years ago in a car, middle of the night on the way to Austin. I didn't know anyone there and had not been around those parts in a decade. I can to this day remember driving in wonder, exploring and envisioning myself in all the places I did not know yet and interacting with the people I had not met yet; these are exactly the sort of thoughts one should have embarking alone into the world of college.
And before I knew it, four years were over in one great whirlwind of transient memories. I took tests and got grades and finished races long and short and sweat pounds and pounds of sweat alongside remarkable people. I fell in and out of something I would not call love but would not call just sex either, deciphering those grey realities that always seem to exist when young people show feelings for other young people. I travelled across such a big ocean and drank beers with people on the other side of the world which, as I found, is a great life investment. And the books I read; that meant so much. What we decide to read says so much about who we are.
And so, while it would be easy to stand complacent, basking in the glow of all that and a great city, I think it is time to go again. I did not set off one day four years ago to stay forever, and, with Steve Jobs in mind, I see that now. My tenure in Austin is done, and there is just so much more to do. That will begin in Spain and end somewhere else, and that is all I really know.
I spend my days now creating lifelike images: kissing a girl in Paris or Stockholm on a bridge in the cold; reading a book in a hammock on some Greek Island referenced in The Odyssey; walking the beaches in Normandy, where they say a leaf does not drop without someone picking it up; drinking a beer in some small corner of the globe with the guy now typing away across the hall of our South Congress abode. It is a bittersweet feeling, these new beginnings desirable, these unavoidable ends bearable; somewhere in the middle lies 5103 miles.
- Henry David Thoreau
I often find myself, when looking back at wide sections of life, doing as Steve Jobs says and connecting the dots. You see so clearly how bad things led to good things and you understand better the fact that you could not have organized any of the mess. It is all very exciting, and it always gets me thinking that if I could see these things in advance -- one cosmic moment of foresight -- I probably would want to; how neat would it be to walk into a bar and get a flash of yourself kissing some beautiful stranger now on a bar stool, two weeks down the road on a park bench? When I say this I know it's best we don't get those sneak peaks, because the mystery and the uncertainty is as much a part of life as anything in the world and you can't mess with things so important.
And before I knew it, four years were over in one great whirlwind of transient memories. I took tests and got grades and finished races long and short and sweat pounds and pounds of sweat alongside remarkable people. I fell in and out of something I would not call love but would not call just sex either, deciphering those grey realities that always seem to exist when young people show feelings for other young people. I travelled across such a big ocean and drank beers with people on the other side of the world which, as I found, is a great life investment. And the books I read; that meant so much. What we decide to read says so much about who we are.
And so, while it would be easy to stand complacent, basking in the glow of all that and a great city, I think it is time to go again. I did not set off one day four years ago to stay forever, and, with Steve Jobs in mind, I see that now. My tenure in Austin is done, and there is just so much more to do. That will begin in Spain and end somewhere else, and that is all I really know.
I spend my days now creating lifelike images: kissing a girl in Paris or Stockholm on a bridge in the cold; reading a book in a hammock on some Greek Island referenced in The Odyssey; walking the beaches in Normandy, where they say a leaf does not drop without someone picking it up; drinking a beer in some small corner of the globe with the guy now typing away across the hall of our South Congress abode. It is a bittersweet feeling, these new beginnings desirable, these unavoidable ends bearable; somewhere in the middle lies 5103 miles.
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