Personality

 I've spent the last sixteen years of my life in school-- which is terribly unimpressive, because now at twenty-one, I look at my brain and find nothing.

I think this is because I don't pay attention, and though I receive knowledge and facts and wisdom, I do not retain it, and in five years, five months, five day's time, my mind feels empty, and it is as if I haven't learned anything at all.

Even in some of my favorite classes at Western-- my Astronomy class, for example, taught by a man whose soul I hope will forever be at the right hand of God, if people have souls, and if God has a right hand. Or I hope his stardust spirit floats forever in the starry void to understand all of life's distant mysteries.

I wish him well, is more or less what I am saying, because he has given me so much. However, I say he has given me so much, but most of the information he gave me I do not remember.

I do not remember how far away the earth is from the sun, or how hot the sun is, or the reason why the universe is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, or how and why the universe will eventually collapse back in on itself, or why there really is no center of the universe, or how to disprove the McGruder Demon theory.

I do not remember the facts. The facts, sir, I do not remember.

But, perhaps the class was still a success, because I am now more aware that such facts do exist, such ideas and concepts do manifest themselves in our universe, and now I am aware that there are things to be known. Perhaps that is all the good that college has done me-- it has made me more curious, more aware that there are things I am not aware of.

Where was I going with all of this? There was a point... Oh.

I've been in school for sixteen years. And the life of the student is more or less characterized by one feature (among others)-- early mornings. And you would think that after sixteen years or so of this lifestyle, I would be okay with waking up at seven every morning, and I could do so with a cheery disposition, and perhaps even a smile to greet the day. Every morning I should rip the curtains from my sunshine-stained windows and let the morning tell me something good. And every morning, i should make ten cups of coffee for myself and everyone else in the house, and I should take ten minute showers and listen to NPR and do some sit ups and push ups and maybe take a morning jog around the block. If I had a dog, I would walk it. Maybe I could stroll to campus with Good Morning on my mouth for everyone around me, and I might as well just carry candy or cough drops in my pocket to hand out to people who look like they've had it rough.

But I am not that guy.

I hate mornings. Usually the first word in the mornings is some expletive or other because I forgot to set my alarm clock and I have to be at work in fifteen minutes. Or I feel drowsy and hung over because of all the substances that I exceedingly put into my body the night before. I walk bleary-eyed into the sunshine streets, sometimes with my fly undone, tripping over my shoelaces, with headphones in my ears listening to Radiohead or Grizzly Bear, because they understand. If I see someone I know sitting at the bus stop, I would not say hello. I would stare at the pavement rolling beneath me and bury my hands in my pockets where I would probably find used tissue paper or a guitar pick or a cough drop that somebody gave me because I looked like I've had it rough.

All this to say, I know I should get used to mornings, but I don't know if I will, or if I should-- maybe I would be loosing all that is characteristic of Isaac if i changed things about myself, like suddenly liking mornings instead of hating them.

Have you ever felt like you're stuck between what you are and what you think you should be?

Or you wonder if what you are really is how you should be?

Or you wonder if what you should be is something different from what you are, but you're not exactly sure what you should be?

Or maybe you are sure what you should be, but you don't know how to change, or if you want to change, or if you can change, or if you should change?

These people changed:

Mahatma Gandhi:

Originally a barrister of British law until he was twenty-four and moved to South Africa, where he then discovered himself in regards to politics and religion within the next twenty-one years, and eventually became the father of Indian independence and changed the world through civility and love. I wonder what was in his mind in this picture. If he was the same Gandhi that everyone knows, the same one that changed the world, or if it is a different Gandhi, a Gandhi that isn't quite there, a Gandhi that is somewhere else, with thoughts in his head much like the ones that occupy everyone else's heads, thoughts on money, marriage, choice of neck-ties, what he will have for dinner after this. I wonder who told him to cross his arms for this picture, or if he did it himself because he wanted to say something about himself, or if that's what everyone did in those kinds of pictures in those days. Was he proud of who he was, or did he hate himself? Did he want to change, or was he okay with where he was?

 And what if he had remained that way? Forever standing matter-of-fact-ly before a camera, arms crossed, year after year accumulating money and becoming a successful lawyer, and loving his wife, and no one would ever blame him for staying that way, until his hair turns white and his face becomes riddled with age, until he takes his last crossed-arms picture and he is no more, and the world continues unchanged. No one would blame him for that, because that is how most of us live. But he was haunted by something, something that drove him mad, something that burst from within him, or into him, and he couldn't help but change.

Charlie Chaplin the man. No secretive smile, no makeup, no bowler hat. Just a man with disheveled face and hair, grinning timidly---probably about nothing. Sad eyes. A face to say "I don't know what became of all of this, but here it is, and I'm glad you've enjoyed it."


These pictures tell me that it is not only possible, but good, to be more than one thing. To be multifaceted, multidimensional, forever changing and re-changing, going forward and backwards, to stay and to go. To throw up your arms and say I am what I am and then be and not worry anymore. And if what you are is not what you want, then do away with it altogether and start anew. To be a self is to be free, and if you do not know yourself, then let yourself run wild a while and see where it goes. These men I love, because they were never just one thing. They tested themselves, they let themselves go and watched where they took themselves.

They lived and eventually died, and the journey changed themselves and the world. I aim to be like these men. Perhaps I am too hung up on worrying about being in order to become like them.
Perhaps I worry to much.
Perhaps I do not worry enough.
Perhaps I sometimes forget who I am,
and maybe someday I will find who I am,
and maybe I have already found who I am and haven't realized it.
Or maybe there is no real self to find, just different versions of a grander scheme of things that I do not understand.
But I will search myself and I will let myself run free and I will observe and I will learn and I will do so until I die.