On Change - Making the best of it

Dropping out of school changes everything.

Yes, there are the superficial changes. You have more time. And fewer problem sets. You stop whining about the mediocrity of dining hall food. And start appreciating anything warm that’ll fill your stomach for a few hours.

More fundamentally, though, you lose your place in society. And you become aware of that reality really fast.

This sense of lost entitlement doesn’t bother to blend in with the fall foliage or conceal itself in any other way. It manifests itself throughout your life, in places crowded and sparse, in moments public and private, in situations ranging from the blandly mundane to the exhaustingly dramatic. It’s hard to explain what it’s like to be a newly minted outsider, but suddenly even everyday exchanges – paying for groceries at the register, filling the gas tank – feel different.

At least for me, the passing of time only intensifies this feeling of misfit. I have yet to be able to desensitize myself to it, partly because new situations keep arising that keep this reality on my radar.

And frankly, this may well be for the best.

For one thing, it can be incredibly liberating. It really opens up your world to escape the confining label of “college student.” One day shortly after I withdrew from school, I took a New Jersey Transit train towards NY Penn Station. I remember very clearly the moment – and I know it’s disgustingly cliché to talk about this kind of eureka-moment, but it’s the truth – I remember the moment I looked out the train window and realized that from that point on I would be fully responsible for everything that “happened” to me. Without the prospect of a protective piece of paper with a school’s insignia inked on next to my name, my future would rely heavily on my own agency (of course I’d never be arrogant enough to forget to acknowledge Chance).

When that realization hit me, I really felt my way of thinking change. Unburdened from trying to be perfect for the sake of grades and transcripts, I found myself able to engage in the kind of creative free-form thinking that I’ve always loved, but somehow forgot about in the rush of college. Unsheltered from the security of being affiliated with an institution of higher learning, I found myself humble to the utmost degree. With my new beginner’s mindset, suddenly anything and everything became my teacher – even something as simple as the falling of a leaf, or the motion of a train. I felt I had reclaimed some sort of primal freedom.

Most people would say that this kind of freedom doesn’t pay the bills. I think they severely miss the point. Being able to disengage from the grind of life does not mean you aren’t able to buckle down and work hard when you need to. I certainly have not lost the ability to discipline myself – whether in an intellectual endeavor, in manual or clerical labor, or in any other type of undertaking. But I have gained the ability – or perhaps just lost the inhibition – to tap into my own creative genius.

The pressure of necessity does not have to stifle your creativity. In fact it can be a great motivator. It keeps your mind sharp and alert to any opportunity that might appear along the way – as long as you’re willing to take chances and embrace the ideas and inspiration that come to you under duress.

A piece of advice that I consistently get from all sorts of people in all forms of expression is that I should “Think about the big picture,” or “Think practically” – variations on the theme of “Let’s be real now.” The implication is that I’m too unsettled, too unfocused, and too naïve about surviving in this harsh world we live in. That at some point, I’ll need to settle down, have a family, and have a career so I can provide for kids and pay for cars and houses. The implication is that my lifestyle is unsustainable. That I’m not being wise, and I’ll soon pay for it. That I’m an unreasonable fool.

On the contrary, I believe that I am looking at the big picture most of all. From my vantage point, it seems most people confine their picture to a snapshot of the societal standard – let’s get that house in the suburbs, put our kids in the right schools, have them hang out with the right kids, and let the well-oiled institutions that are already in place work their magic to sort everything out. Let’s ride out the status quo, right?

If you really think hard though, this is about as narrow-minded a view as you can take. With your laser focus, you’ve cut out from your life the possibility for so much more! The fact is, in life you’re not so much trying to “find yourself,” or find your place in society, as you’re trying to create yourself. Be who you want to be! For the most part, the most suffocating limit is the limit you set for yourself with your own mind!

If the process of self-creation means that things change rapidly from one day to the next, go with it! Don’t listen when people call you a flip-flopper or accuse you of lacking commitment – these people lack imagination! They don’t realize the power of failing fast, failing often, and learning from those failures. They don’t realize that creative destruction doesn’t just apply to forest fires and evolution; it applies to you. They don’t realize that in the end, the journey is the reward.

I’d like to point out that I say all of this not from some lofty theoretical perch. I live by these values every day of my life. I know that whether or not I succeed by the conventional metric, in my heart and mind I’m already a smashing success because my journey has already been so rewarding – filled with the kinds of moments that no college degree or heap of money could purchase.

So don’t fear change. Embrace it, even if you contradict and make a hypocritical ass of yourself, or go through complete reversals of belief ten times in ten days! As long as you learn from change, you’re doing it right. I say this holds for people of all ages, but there’s no question in my mind that it’s especially true for the young (young of heart?).

A friend of mine once had a long-winded discussion with an astrophysics professor at Princeton University, at the end of which the professor offered the following gem of wisdom:

If you’re twenty years old and can’t do what you want to do, and try what you want to try, then what’s the point?

-David

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