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| Jared Thomas ('20) |
Once upon a time, once upon a time was the best I could come up
with. Sorry to say not much has changed.
A long, long
time ago, before I had a super firm grasp on how to tie my shoes, I decided,
with all the pomp, circumstance and tenacity a bloated six year old has to
offer, that the world would stop spinning all at once if I didn’t spend every
waking minute learning how to write. When I was even littler, my Mom and Dad
used to spend all the time they weren’t at work with my outsized head lolling on
their laps, reading me story after story after story. I don’t know if I always
understood what the words meant, but the rhythm got through to me and kept me
in the world’s most comfortable set of chains.
For me, it was
easy to find all the peace I needed in the beat the sounds made as they dripped
out of my Mom’s mouth as summer turned into Fall melted into Spring. But time
doesn’t slow town for sleepy summer afternoons and as it flowed, it took me
down the rapids with it. I got older. I got dumber. I learned how to tie my
shoes, at least mostly and, more importantly, I started reading to myself,
spiriting myself away on those lazy evenings that floated in-between somewhere
and nowhere to places I’d never been, but wanted to go with all the desperation
of a house cat glaring out a dirty window pane.
And with that
came the Itch. You see, other people’s words were good. They were great, even
and I drank them up as fast as I could. But the more words I took in, the more
I kept in my backpack to flirt with my pocket lint. I don’t think I knew what I
was saving them for yet, but I knew I needed to keep as many of them as I could
as close to me as I could manage. It felt like the most important thing I’d
never done before, but maybe the best thing I could.
When I started
stringing those leftovers together, my whole life changed in a flash of
scribbles on stolen copy paper. Suddenly, I wasn’t just the passenger on a
cruise ship, I was the captain, I built the ship, it was bright red and I was
setting a course for whatever I could come up with. It felt good. No, it felt
better than anything else I’d ever felt in my entire life, like I wasn’t just
living for me, but for every platitude my preteen brain could will into
existence.
When you love
something that much, it’s hard to imagine that one day it might go away, at
least a little bit, at least for a while. As far as I’m concerned, a maker, a
creative, an artist, whatever you want to call it, has a giant rock smack-dab
in the middle of an impossible ocean whirling around just north of all the
responsibilities in their head. Every day, the waves crash, smash, bash into it
over and over and over again and, ever so slowly, the rock starts to chip. The
waves aren’t anonymous, no. They all have names and you probably know a few.
Obligations. Time. Age.Dread. Broken Relationship and battered friendships.
Little things, big things, medium sized things that life throws at you that
makes making make a little less sense than it did before.
The biggest
wave, though, is time and that one never stops coming, not really.That’s the
white whale that all the pirates a littler grayer in the beard than you are
going to tell you to watch out for. And they’re so right. That’s what I’m
struggling with.
When you’re a
kid, it’s easy to spend all day soaking up twilight in the backyard of the
house you grew up in, staring at the sky and wondering what if. That’s the
simplest, best thing in the world because it’s your universe and the rest of us
are just living in it. But as you pick up a wrinkle or eight, the clouds get a
little further away and your rock gets smaller. If it seems like the waves are
getting bigger, it’s because they are. If it seems like all the good stuff is
getting a little further away, it’s because it is.
Normally, I end
these blogs with a rousing call to action. Normally, I’d point out that the
best way to beat the wave is to fix your rock, refuel your engine, put your
peddle to the metal and keep going. But if I’m being honest, and I’m going to
try to be, I’m not so sure. This is a problem that me, someone sitting here
writing this to you, struggles with each and every day and I have no incentive
to lie to you and tell you I’ve got it all figured out. I don’t. I absolutely,
definitively have no idea how to solve this problem without going absolute
nuclear on every important thing in your life.
Sometimes, that
option doesn’t seem so bad. Can’t get beat by the waves if there is no water.
But that’s not
practical. Everyone always tells me there’s a balance and all I have to do is
strike it while the iron is hot.
Well, if there is one, dangling somewhere out
there in the ether, I can’t see the forest for the trees, much less the leaves
for the bark.
If you’ve got
the answer, I’m all ears.
Jared Thomas, of Cynthiana, Ky., is a sophomore McConnell Scholar studying political science, economics, and French.