On Being Nothing

So, today was the big trip to Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, which is what I am supposed to be writing about for my journal tonight (I really do have an academic purpose (albeit a small, minor one) for keeping this, in case you never realized). I will have to do this eventually, but not tonight. Tonight, I have many other thoughts buzzing through my head. Thoughts pertaining to all of the things I am not.

Some people who walk the planet today matter. Some lead fantastically interesting lives. Some sacrifice themselves for the good of their community or the world. Many, many more sit on their asses all day and push paper for some piece of crap,faceless corporate bueracracy. What kind of life would I like to have??

Sometimes I sit and ponder all the things that I cannot do well. I generally come at this from a positive frame of mind, more like an "all the things I can still learn to do" kind of perspective. But it seems generally to me that I am one of the accursed, a very average kind of girl with monstrously fantastic aspirations. Even as I sit and type this, I am in the exotic land of Australia, the bane of explorers and showcase for the strange, a place that should thrill me with its foreignness. OK, big deal. I live in America: I get up in the morning, make breakfast, go to class, talk to people, go back home. I live in Australia: get up in the morning, get yogurt and cereal for brekkie, go to class where the teacher has an accent, go home. WHERE ARE MY ADVENTURES??

It seems to me that the time of adventures has passed. Now people look at what I'm doing and say, "Ah, studying abroad, what adventures you'll have!" But as I have just outlined, not much has changed in the basic shape which my life takes, whether I'm there or here. These are the adventures of my life, riding into town on the train, going out for Chinese food, walking down to the bakery for a cake or pastie??? It seems like nowadays no one is crossing the deserts with a train of camels, no one is hacking their way through the jungle with a machete, no one is climbing to the peak of the tallest mountains to sound a barbaric yawp, no one is hacking through the ice to hunt for a seal to stave off starvation, no one is taking to the sea in a glorious and tall-masted ship to sail for parts unknown.

And who's to say that I should be the one to do any of those things? When it comes right down to it, I am a very small, very weak little girl who is not particularly good at much of anything. How could I sail the sea or cross the desert? There are some days when it seems like I can barely cross the street. And yet, in spite of my inability, the yearning remains, the desire to be something more than what I am, for my life to mean great and mighty things as it is lived out in great and mighty deeds. I really do want to be THE MIGHTY SHANNON! In fact, it is one of the terrors of my existence that I will grow up to be...(*squinch*) a soccer Mom, driving ungrateful kids hither and yon in a mini-van, cooking mulifarious cassaroles with cream of chicken soup while my fat and boorish husband guzzles beer in front of the tube. *Massive shudder* Perish the thought, take me now, Lord!!! Where is my damn machete, I'm outta here! (Honestly, I should not have gone there in such explicit detail, I am still convulsing with horror).

How to escape that dreadful, dreadful life that seems to prey upon the unwary? How to make a mark on this dizzy little planet, how to shake the stars and all the heavens with an act of valor, done worthily with a noble heart?

My nice little Christian sensibilities tell me that I should end these musings (rantings?) with some nice little statement about how I should just suck it up and be graciously, cheerily satisfied, that it's fine with me if I end up teaching a kindergarten Sunday school instead of speaking for presidents and kings. But I am not okay with that. I refuse to live that life. Perhaps those of us who are granted outlandish dreams are given them not so that we may be thwarted and tormented by them, but because a life of meaning really is possible. I want to live a life among the stars. I refuse to allow my fears to keep me earth-bound.