Passing Through Our Hands

(Source)

When I was in high school, my world (beyond school) largely consisted of band, drama, role-playing games, and video games.

I spent hours reading through books and modules of the early days of role-playing games:  Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Gamma World, Car Wars.  I played, with a best friend or small group, as we adventured through worlds that did not exist in our minds.

The same with video games as well - these were the days before home computers, so the only place to play was at the local arcade, pizza parlor, or bowling alley.  I pumped quarters in.  If we went to the bookstore in The Big City, I would find the magazines that had "50 ways to score high in Defender" or "Galaga:  Unlocked!".  

Meanwhile in the background, band and drama filled the passing of the year.  When I was not studying, I was practicing or rehearsing.  When I was not practicing or rehearsing, I was reading or playing.

And then, of course, high school ended.

As it turns out, role-playing games and video games had a pretty limited application in the post-high school world.  Yes, I continued to play for awhile, but the increased demands of college and then work pushed such things away.  Drama fell by the wayside, driven by the fact that being a big fish in a small pond is not the same thing as being a small fish in a big pond.  Only music stuck with me in some form or fashion through the years - along with a nostalgic love of 1st Edition Gamma World materials, which I keep lovingly on my shelf.

My life - or much of what I had prepared for - simply did not matter.

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It is easy enough to look back on our late teens or high school or even college and sniff at what we spent our time on, realizing that it was really not preparing us for the life we actually lived.  But the reality is that this situation continues unabated in the modern world.

If anything, I wonder if the modern world has exacerbated the situation.

Americans, among other things, have often been known for the fact that they seem to believe they can do anything. In some ways that is undoubtedly a legacy from our founding and the fact that for many, they came from hard circumstances or from elsewhere and made a life for themselves.  But just like fruit hanging on a tree too long, the idea seems to have gone to rot.

We have moved from the era of "I can do (or be) anything I want" to "I do (or be) anything I want".  My interests, my passions, shaping the world around myself and my wants and desires has become paramount.

An easy place to see this is in the growth of college programs, where we now have majors that cover literally every possible outcome in the world. Which is fine, I suppose.  But many of those bright eyed students (including me, at one time) never asked the question "And what am I going to do when I get out of school?"  

We prepare for the life that we imagine, but have no true influence over. 

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Arguably the modern world is more busy and active than ever.  If one wanted to, one could be engaged in inputs and activities every hour of the day one was alive, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year.  And those inputs are exciting:  visually stimulating, sounding amazing, mind engaging, fulfilling every desire we might have to be engaged or educated or entertained.

And yet this is a life which is in some means artificial.

We spend so much time in a world "out there" or preparing for things that do not truly matter that we forget that the life we do control - the one that matters - goes on quietly in the background.  

The life we control is generally not glamourous.  It is often not exciting.  It consists mainly of the things we do day to day, the interactions we have with others, the daily religious observances and prayers, the small chores and preparations and other tasks that seem completely "boring" or uninteresting.  And yet arguably it is in the moments that we are truly living our lives, truly grasping the hours instead of letting them slip through our fingers.  Because these things are the true things that impact us in meaningful and deep ways, ways that make us ourselves.

I cannot grasp the life that has slipped through my hands already.  But I can at least make the amount remaining mean something, instead of wafting off into a future that never was going to be.