Thoughts on a rainy Thursday

Just a few thoughts, freeflowing, something to come back to:

I am 23. Things are starting to gain a strange type of momentum now, the kind that I wish I could control, but which -- inevitably -- I can't. That's what real momentum is, though. So maybe what I was experiencing before was but a wayward tug. This is true release, I think, what I've needed to have all this time but couldn't. I scramble about so much in my daily life, trying to balance a set of priorities and people that just ask for too much of my attention and responsibility. And not to say that I don't genuinely care about each and every one of these pieces of my life -- but Mom knows best (and somehow she always gets the timing just right) -- in saying that I can't have everything.

Grab for too much and you risk losing what you already have.

And maybe that's a generational thing -- I'm not sure. But I've been raised to expect the world, to reach for the stars, to -- any number of trite sayings to fill in the blank, phrases that tell of pushing limits, expanding, growing, breathing. And I've always believed that the only person standing in the way of your success (however you might define that) -- is you. Just. You.

What most everyone wants and needs in life is not material. This much I know. The pursuit of happiness, that's something more tangible to me than chasing money. Money -- it's a concept. It's paper. It's the luxury and the status and the illusion of exclusion that's appealing. All because, really, those ideas are so tied up in the concept of happiness. It's become assumed that money will act as a catalyst for better things. A push in the right direction.

And so when I sat in a cab, homeward-bound, at 5:30 in the morning earlier today (yikes), heading home from work as the rest of the city shook itself awake, I had an epiphany. I need to once again embrace this feeling of trust that I can't control my circumstances, but I CAN control what I make of it. In a world of stumbled-into, accidentally-met happenstance, I want to know that after an initial push, I have to let things be. Steer, but only when I need to.

The one area of my life that I am wholly in control of is my mind, my mentality, my hyper-awareness of my own thoughts. I think I need this jolt of irregularity, strange schedule, a weird kind of isolation, in order to really see what I value and where I put in my time and effort.

My days are so much longer now. I wake up on my own accord, spend time with myself, my body (hello, gym and yoga) and my mind (hey now, NYTimes) because I know that this entire experience will make me that much mentally stronger. So much of society today is cast in a glow of interactions, outside reinforcements, chasing signs that we're okay, and I want to look deeper into that.

We bump into people, update our status feeds and blog about our days because it means that we're alive, that someone out there will think of us, talk about us, remember us.

I was once told that humans are born with one fear -- a fear of falling. This was meant in the literal sense, about the kind of falling that endangers our lives and develops into a fear of heights and vertigo. But in a broader sense, fear of falling means fear of failing, of tumbling from the social consciousness.

We blog because we want to stay relevant. We tweet because we want to reach out -- listen to me, see me, hear me. This is what I want to share with the world.

But what happens when the world stops listening? Radio silence.

What happens then?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear or see it fall, has anything really happened?

We focus externally, look outward because sometimes (most of the time) that's so much easier. I want so much out of life, but I really want, more than that, to know why. Why am I constantly filling my days answering emails, meeting up with aquaintances, blogging (HA) about my thoughts to an anonymous audience?

Solitude will be my best learning tool.

It's easy to get lost in New York City. But last night/this morning, as I glanced over my shoulder at bedroom lights flickering on in high rises as I crossed the bridge, people starting the day just as I was about to end it, I felt found. Their dawn is my dusk. My reality is only, really, in my head. And I was very much aware that I was coming home -- on my own terms.