Trapped

Feeling remarkably trapped in my life this weekend.

It's as if I've suddenly looked up and it feels as if the rest of my life is set for me - and I'm not very excited by future I see.  Yes, I know it's possible to change your choices and thereby change your life, but life seems to be a series of narrowing choices, not expanding ones.

Without very much effort at all, the next 15 years of my life are easily laid out for me:  what I would do, where I will do it, what the expectations are of me. 

So why doesn't this excite me more?

Because in following this course - not precisely chosen for me, but not precisely of my own choosing either - I feel I am simply being reduced to less and less until, at the end, I will simply be nothing more than a compilation of duties and responsibilities.  Me - or any sense of me - will have been long ago washed away, leaving only the persona of duties left in my place.

It's foolish to pretend that at that point something suddenly changes and life reverts back to that which I would like it to be.  15 years from now - or even 5 years from now - I will be that much farther away from that which my heart keenly desires, with that much less time to make it up.

It's wrong to admit, I suppose, that even I am occasionally overcome by the simple desire to just run away - to just shuck everything I have to do and go do what I what to do.  It's foolish, of course, and does not solve anything, but thing that make it attractive - the thing that pushes so many off of that cliff - is the simple fact that one gets to choose something for oneself, that after a long time (years?) of making choices based on responsibilities and duties and things I have to do, one can choose as one wants.

(Again to emphasize it's mostly a pipe dream.  Responsibilities never magically disappear on their own, and the consequences often never really go away.  It's not like we're dealing with at true tabula rosa here.)

But is there a third alternative?  I wish I could see it.  Something between the grinding duty of "I must" and the ephemeral freedom of "I choose" must lie a path where one fulfills responsibilities while have hope and input into the path of one's future. 

Something where "trapped" is not the ultimate definition.