Humans are explorers by nature. It is ingrained into our very core to explore and search and wonder and question. From the earliest of times we have been pushing outward, exploring New Worlds and the Wild Wild West, plumbing the depths of the oceans and the vastness of the skies and outer reaches of space. We discover and create and build and question – always looking for more. It is our manifest destiny to continue to strive to “infinity and beyond!”
But we live in a world that has become increasingly small. Thousands of years of human exploration have led us to this place where we have 24-hour news cycles and camera phones and the ability to communicate instantaneously with someone on the other side of the planet. We can follow Twitter and Facebook for eyewitness accounts of protesting in Iran, Mapquest directions to an event, Google random trivia like “Who was the 15th U.S. President?” and “Can turkeys really drown in the rain?”, browse YouTube if we have a burning desire to watch a cat playing piano, download new music and television shows on itunes… the list continues. What used to be a three-month treacherous journey by ship or cross country trek by covered wagon is now a split second click of the mouse, push of a button. I can boot up my computer, blackberry, iphone, whatever and have the world, literally at my fingertips.
But all of this, all of this knowledge and all of this technology and all of this constant pleasure-on-demand leaves me with one question…
What’s next?
The fields and wide-open spaces are covered in strip malls, if we push any further West we’re going to fall into the ocean and I can’t walk two feet without tripping over someone… and their big ass Hummer.
When even the road less traveled is trampled and worn, where do we go?
I realize of course, that this Earth probably still has some pretty spectacular surprises in store for us, that there are still cures to be found and technological advancements to be made, that there are still possible worlds beyond the sights of our telescopes. There will always be new creations to be imagined and questions to be asked and pondered but sometimes that all just seems so… eh, whatever.
When I was younger I loved to play that computer game “Oregon Trail.” There was something so thrilling about loading up this fictional wagon and starting the trek westward across the computer screen. It was fun and exciting and dangerous. There was the risk of dying of cholera or snakebite or drowning while fording a river or running out of food or supplies. Now, I’m not saying that this children’s computer game somehow represents our human need for exploration. I’m willing to guess that most of us just enjoyed naming all the players after friends and seeing which one died first of typhoid. But the danger element, the wide-open space, traveling to something new, FINDING something new, chartering a new world, the unknown… that’s something worth getting up in the morning and pursuing.
Yeah, I know, I’m starting to sound like a spoiled little brat. Wah, wah, wah, poor me with all these options. Stupid options. I wish I could die of dysentery in a covered wagon. But here’s the thing: I see it all over the place. I have so many friends who are just sort of dog paddling around with no real vision of where to go next. We are a generation with nothing but options and we have no idea what to do with it all. There’s too much to choose from and I think we tend to get all caught up and tripped up and lost in the deciding.
I will switch jobs nine times over the course of a year, I will move around aimlessly, live with my parents, hang out with my friends and complain of boredom because yes, I can do anything – but what, WHAT is it that I want? Really WANT?
It’s sort of new, this deciding. Generations previous have had their lives mapped out from the day of their birth. You will take over the family business. You will marry well. You will bear children. You will work until the day you die because that’s your place in life. Birth, childhood, school, work, marriage, kids, grand kids, death. Ta-da. There you have it. The end.
But now we’ve come to this place in history where we don’t have our futures mapped out. I don’t have to get married and my father is not expected to give up our family cow for my dowry, I don’t have to protect the family name (although, I’m sure my parents would prefer I don’t totally shame it) and I don’t have to take over the family business. I can do or be or become or act any way that I desire. So…
Career? If I have to.
Marriage? Maybe. We’ll see what happens
Kids? Sure. I guess.
Whatever.
Jack Kerouac wrote, “I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” That’s it. I have nothing to offer the world by my own confusion and my restlessness. I’m confused and I’m bored and I think too much. Of course, of course I’m grateful for my lot in life. I realize what it means to have these kinds of options - I just don’t know what to do with them all and sometimes it’s so easy to hide away and not make the decision and just let myself fall into the trap of complacency.
So what do we do?
There are no answers. At least – I don’t have those answers. But here is what I know: Yes, the world has become small. Yes, it can seem sometimes that there are no roads “less traveled.” And no, we don’t need to travel by rickety covered wagon anymore. But we’re never going to wake up one morning and find that there’s noting left to care about, nothing left to work for and push at and fix and re-create and love and take care of on this planet. There’s always going to be something, even if we don’t have to brave fording a river to find it.
We just have to remember to get up and LOOK for it.
So for now, I’m just me, running around in my own confusion, trying to find a way out, trying not to trip myself up in the process, trying to enjoy myself as much as possible while searching for my own, “infinity and beyond.”
World, here is my confusion, do with it what you will.
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