I rummaged through the pile of crap in my bag that had been piling up: my computer, an unpaid parking ticket, some pyrite, books, a tampon, headphones, loose papers. Fuck. Where did I leave it? I thought hard. Ok—when did I use it last? My brain was working overtime. Hmmm, oh, when I got gas. Now, we were getting somewhere – me and my mind, that is. Did I put it back in my bag after getting in the car? I paused, mentally traveling back to the scene of it all: rundown gas station, creepy guy in a beat up truck plastered with American paraphernalia, the smell of gasoline teasing my gag reflexes (I was a deeply motion sick kid), and trash everywhere. Fuck. I threw my wallet on the seat after paying and shutting the car door: it’s still there (probably… hopefully).
Nothing else to do but retrieve my misplaced wallet, I trudged onwards to the parking garage. Only, after aimlessly wandering around the endless, pee-stenched lot for what felt like hours on end, my car was nowhere to be seen. Uh oh. I way too calmly thought to myself, attempting to suppress the inevitable panic. I think I just lost my car…
Shoot, I have class in ten minutes. I guess I’ll figure this out later today.
Except, I didn’t.
This whole saga began after I spontaneously decided to get in my car on a random Thursday night two weeks ago. With nothing but a concept of a destination, a half-finished conversation, and an extra pair of boots (honestly, don’t ask about the logic behind the boots, I don’t really know it myself), I hit the gas hard. I was on my way to see a friend.
Recently, I’ve been just doing things. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people constantly talk about doing things. Don’t get me wrong, I get it: yapping about trips that will never happen or projects you’ll never complete can be entertaining. You know, chatting just for the sake of chatting; it’s exciting, it fills the hours, and livens up the silence. But, if that’s all it ever leads to, I get annoyed: when it’s only chatting, and absolutely no action. I’m an antsy person—if you have a good idea, fucking act on it. Stop talking about it, and just do it (not sponsored by Nike).
Here’s a little tid bit of advice no one at Yale will ever give you: just because your GCal says you have places to be and people to meet with, doesn’t mean you actually have to listen to it.
It was my high school film teacher who taught me the difference between living and surviving. Every Monday, a few friends and I would sit around with him and chit chat (or, as our transcripts more officially coined our collective lounging, an “independent study”). We lied on his classroom’s comfy couches and nagged him, begging him to tell us stories about his enigmatic life. And he would.
He told us about joining a silent buddhist commune for a couple of weeks. With a communal cleaning task and nothing else, his soul befriended his dish washing buddy’s soul: he never even knew her name or where she was from, but they felt as though they deeply understood each other.
He told us about wanting to join the police force for a short spurt of his life, like his five older siblings had done. Then, he quickly reworked his life path after being called into a crime scene, walking into the house and past the caution tape, only to immediately scurry away and vomit. There was a skinned human stuffed in a suit case. Yeah, that was NOT my calling. I hope I never reach a point in my life where I’m that desensitized to such horrific violence, he relayed to us.
He told about the night in college when he and some friends got really drunk and hopped a moving freight train. As they traveled deeper and deeper into the shadows of an unknown landscape, they realized the train wasn’t stopping anytime soon. A few hours passed and water started sprinkling down on them – only, it wasn’t raining. They had crossed the border and were in fucking Canada getting struck by pellets of water from the Niagara Falls. Border patrol was onto them now: they had to make a break for it. And one cop chase and broken wrist later, he had successfully escaped with a great story to pass along to his future students.
He taught us to just do things. He gave us permission, and equipment, to run around New York City and film whatever we wanted to (he also gave us NYU’s password to a website so we could pretend to be college students while hiring professional actors to act in our very much ammature films.)
I’ve carried this energy, urgency, and agency with me since. I’ve come to realize through my own experiences that novelty and curiosity are what give life a pulse. Because at least movement, even if it’s not always productive, is movement. When you’re at a standstill with no obvious trail to walk down, don’t stand still: close your eyes and jump into a black abyss, because maybe it’s not as dark from the inside, and there’s only one way to know for sure.
Jump into the ocean at Lighthouse Point if you have a free afternoon; break onto the Brooklyn Bridge on the fourth of July to see the fireworks; even if that means you’re walking around campus like a wet dog for a few hours or you’re escorted off by the police because as they put it what the hell… you can’t be here, get off the damn bridge!
So, instead of just merely talking with my friend about visiting her, I got in my car and drove to Cornell.
That’s not to say it’s easy. Constantly exercising free will simultaneously summons existential dread. Acting on your impulses isn’t exactly the ideal we are taught as kids. My kindergarten teachers taught me to be kind and treat others how you want to be treated, not to grab life by the balls, and suck out all its damn marrow!!! So, there’s a level of self-detachment and unseriousness you have to approach the world and yourself with when you venture off the beaten path. Structure is comforting. But, it’s also binding and sometimes suffocating. A blueprint is nice and easy and cozy and safe, but it’s also just that: a static blueprint. It’s not alive.
Being spontaneous and turning left when everyone turns right is living. Turning left when everyone is also turning left, is just turning left.
At 1 a.m., alone at the wheel, far away from Yale, far away from home, it struck me: If I keep saying that everything is fake, the question of ‘Why Not?’ becomes the same as ‘Why?’ – if there’s no reason Not to do something, because nothing is real, that’s also no reason To do anything either. So, does it even matter if it’s real or fake? Only the hum of the stereo responded. But, I kept driving. Even if it is all fake, that’s all the more reason to be impulsive and use your free will.Why waste this fake little life filling a meaningless little role?
I pulled into the parking lot at 2am (for which I subsequently received a parking ticket two days later… it’s still unpaid: I should probably get on that), grabbed my boots, and headed inside. She was dozing off in the crevice of the couch in her stupid “Daddy’s Little Meatball” shirt. Her friends were nagging her to wake up, but she wouldn’t budge. Then, her eyes fluttered open, our glances interlocked, her dimples deepened, and our collective grins grew. She flew out of bed, and we became one. And our hug felt so real.
Running around frantically, and somewhat aimlessly, makes me feel alive. It’s that aliveness that is tangible to me. Acting spontaneously sometimes does allow minute details to slip through the cracks. So, sure, I lost a real object. A real, really really large object… a freaking automotive vehicle. But, it was just an object that was gone; not a belief system. And, at least the lost car was proof that something happened.
In Mary Oliver’s wise words, Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Why waste your life on surviving? We get one damn go at this thing. Do Something. Act Irrationally. Even if that means you miss a meaningless meeting, even if that means you’re freaking out on the interstate, or even if that means you lose every form of identification you have. Get in your fucking car and drive to Ithica (said literally no one ever, but you get the gist).
P.S. for all you anxious, nosy little readers wondering, yes, I did find my car. Turns out I was hunting through the wrong garage…
