Diatribe of a Caffeinated Mind

A few weeks ago, I came to the realization that my life is largely without any definite direction. Unlike many of my peers (but like the large majority of my true friends), I do not know where I am going in the future--I am not planning to go to med school immediately after graduation and become a doctor in 5-7 years. Nor am I planning to become a corporate lawyer working for a 7-figure salary, nor even a consultant for a non-profit or some Wall Street firm in New York. I have no goals. But, I'm not ashamed of that. That doesn't upset me. In fact, I would be more concerned if I had found a definite direction that I was determined never to stray from.

You see, one thing that college teaches you (if nothing else) is that what you study as an undergrad has little relevance to your life after graduation--whether that involves grad school, professional school, a regular day job, or (God forbid) long-term unemployment. College is another one of those equalizers that is designed to knock you off of that pedestal you had built for yourself in high school and to teach you that everybody is fundamentally the same. In one way or another.

But then it hit me. Watching, of all things, Stranger than Fiction (or, as I know it, L'incroyable destin de Harold Crick), I found myself particularly engaged by the random and incredibly detailed shots the camera would occasionally hold during the film. For example, every once in awhile you'll get a close-up of Harold's watch or a pan shot of the city in all its modernist drabness or a POV shot of Miss Pascal's bakery from Harold's place outside the window. The shots that happen in the movie, like the shots that happen in any movie, are carefully executed and captured only after however many tries it takes to get exactly the vision the director wants perfectly right. They are designed to capture the beauty in the everyday objects we collect around us--the watch, yes, but similarly the iPod headphones strewn on the floor, the empty water glass on the bedside table, the lifeguard's whistle symbolically tossed on the floor before a dive in the water. To capture these moments is a difficult pursuit, to be sure, but it is perhaps one of the most rewarding experiences out there. It is almost as if you had been able to capture, just for that one moment, a glimpse of holiness, pure and true. It's the same feeling as the actor who is able to perfectly capture a moment of desperation or of pure joy when portraying a character, or a musician finding that exact combination of tones that was in his or her head, or a writer looking at the perfect combination of words--the "perfect sentence" that is so elusive but almost within reach at any moment.

That's when I came to the conclusion that modern life has lost touch with that element of purity, of beauty, of perfection, leaning instead toward practical and calculated choices based on which direction is safest and the least involved. It's why the most popular majors on many college campuses these days are those most related to high-paying jobs: engineering, economics or business, and other such courses in practicality. Which is not to say that these paths are not justified in their own right and that some individuals do choose them because they see the beauty in an economic system or a circuit board. Two things I will never see. But what is tragic, what is worst, is to make a decision of your life's goal, your life's direction based on practicality, based on how much money you will make or how likely you are to find a job out of school. The way things are going, it's going to be competitive no matter where you go, and it's going to be a tough search in every direction you can choose. All the more reason to find something exciting, to take the time to explore yourself and find a direction that you think can open your eyes to that beauty and that perfection in its pure and real form.

Which is why I sometimes worry that I've gone the wrong path. You know, Urban Studies has been a lot of fun, but what I wonder is where I'm going to find the type of work that will excite me with an Urban Studies degree. Perhaps a good sign is that I am passionate about my major and deeply interested in the classes I take. But I don't really think that working for a real estate developer is my ultimate dream in life. Unfortunately I'm afflicted with a passion for beauty, an interest in those little moments that can be so exciting and so eye-opening in three seconds or less. Some may not see the rationality in trying to get a camera shot exactly perfect, passing the director's three-hundred tries off to his OCD. And perhaps it is a little obsessive; but then again, what could be more rational than the search for perfection?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that is the highest pursuit there is. Plato and Aristotle didn't argue about empty ideas; beauty is the one idea that really is true.