Brettia

Have you even been hurtling forward through life only to stop short suddenly and wonder why you’re blindly doing what you’re doing? Sometimes I wonder, if I were just more…normal, what things might be like. Who would I be, what would I be doing, and most importantly, would I be happier? My first thought: probably not. My second thought: maybe. Lately I’ve felt increasingly antisocial, and though I know I’m not totally hopeless (I have friends, and such), this being out of school thing is not helping. I remember being so happy on the last day of school, joyful and exultant, ready to leave the forsaken campus for three whole months of peace and relaxation. Little did I know that these three months of peace and relaxation would be spent mostly alone or with my younger brother, who just watches TV and plays the PS2 and nothing else.

Not only that, but I’m also faced with a severe lack of something to do. I’m the kind of person who always needs something to work toward, some kind of purpose or goal to strive for. Right now, I have no purpose and no goal. It’s like floating around in the North Atlantic with only a pink floatie to keep you from drowning. I want to cast off the embarrassing floatie and try to save myself, but I risk dying (or failure) by doing so.

When I say that I have nothing to do, it’s not that I just sit around all day and stare at the wall. It’s that I have nothing to do that’s worth doing. Sure, I can keep building websites for Jim (Trapani), earn some more money, hopefully get a nice new computer someday. But do I really even want one? Isn’t the computer the whole reason for my crappy social life in the first place? I guess everybody ends up having a job that takes up a lot of their time at one point in their high school life, but I’m starting about a year and half earlier than everybody else. Maybe I should just figure out how much money I’d make with a normal part-time job in a restaurant for three years, and then try to earn that much through my current job. After that, quit. Then I’ll be breaking even with less work. But what would I do after that?

The problem is, without computers and stuff, I have no other skills or hobbies. I don’t play any sports, and I’m too out-of-shape and unskilled to start playing one now. I’m a good student, and I’m great at schoolwork and stuff, but that gets old too. To me it seems like I am skilled at everything that has nothing to do with other people, and I suck at everything else. Truthfully, it’s not that people don’t like me, or that they’re jealous of my academic successes (some are, but they just joke about it), it’s that people only like me to a point. We’ll talk and joke and goof around at school, but I’m not invited to do anything outside of school, and for me to invite someone else to go do something would just be…wrong. So I end up sticking around with the two best friends that I’ve known since 6th grade, Jim and Dylan. I’d hang out with Tyler too, but the general animosity between Jim and Tyler sort of messes that up.

All I can say is that the next three years are pretty much the only time I have left before I’m considered an adult, before I have to worry about myself even more than I do already. Those three years could be the best or the worst of my life, depending on how I use them. I just have to change myself, mold myself into something that I want to be, rather than something that I wanted to be. Just figuring out exactly what that something that I want to be is will be the hard part.

But even if I succeed at this “remodeling” of myself, what about later? Where will I end up? What do I actually want to do with my life? I mean, I don’t even know what career I want to pursue. Probably something technology related, but I’m not sure. Sometimes I have to admit that I really despise technology. I can see what it’s doing to us (mankind), how it destroys our planet, how it destroys our species. But I don’t want to be a treehugger, either.

This was actually a topic of discussion between Jim and I (isn’t it weird how when you say “Jim and I” out loud it sounds like “Gemini” (which happens to be my astrological sign)) a few months ago during a particularly boring PE class. The main theme of the conversation was how humans were headed for sure destruction if we didn’t do something to curb our exploitation of our planet soon. I don’t think I actually said it aloud, but I began to wonder: if technology is so bad, if by expanding our knowledge of the universe and moving forward scientifically, we (humans) are killing our planet, why were we ever allowed to get beyond the Stone Age anyway?

It almost seems like intelligence is more of a curse than a blessing. Perhaps if we were more responsible, then we could manage to peacefully coexist with nature, but I can’t see that ever happening. But why are humans intelligent if our intelligence will kill everything around us? Why should we even try if the wonders that we create are nothing compared to the natural wonders that we destroy? Is the real meaning of life just that: that no species was ever meant to have our intellect and power over others, and that none ever will again? Is humanity just some sort of biological mistake, an experiment gone horribly wrong?

But these theories concentrate on the bad parts of human nature, not the good. Without us, there would be no love, no emotion, no thought, no reason. These are the qualities that make us unique and that allow us to appreciate what is around us. But without humans, there would be no need for those qualities, because there wouldn’t be anyone around to understand them, right? If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?