In Dilemma

I’ve been having worrying images - visions, if you like - of the future. Every where, every day and every thing springs up with this huge industrial neon-sign calling for applications to the universities of my choice. Then comes the criteria: smashing requirement after smashing requirement. Then comes the blow to the head: Tuition and boarding fees.

Blackout.

I blink open my dazed eyes, stars still swirling around. Financial Aid. Scholarships. The criteria bars are set even higher. The competition for their limited supply is ruthless and unforgiving. One wrong step, one wrong grade, one wrong decision and my entire future seems to crumble down.

But what future? Call me escapist, unambitious, or just indifferent to flashing billboards advertising "THIS WAY TO COLLEGE!", but I’ve no specific aspirations for a career or degree. All I dream of doing is to discover and continue to learn, to explore and to keep on thinking, to write and to never stop reading. Where I end up, where I go, as long as learning, thought, reading and writing are present, I don’t care.

It becomes rather hypocritical of me, then, to have such dreams built high up with Ivy League universities in mind. It is easy to be sucked into the society you live in. The one I come from is incessant over education plans, career ambitions and making it through university. It’s easy to forget that, in Emerson's words, "we're always planning to live, but never living".

If I wasn't in the least interested in my future, why should I worry about getting there?

It might seem overconfident to speak of the winds that brought me here, and to rely on the same winds to bring me forward. But I have faith in the winds.

It puts my mind somewhat at ease to know that I’ll not mind not getting a place at the universities of my choice, or getting the scholarships that I need to get there. It puts my mind at ease and at greater concentration for the 'now', to be ready to lift my wings and let the wind sweep me in its wave to wherever it may go.

I feel a cool breeze whispering in the night. Let me in on your secret!