"...my heart's still beatin'. I guess I'm pretty lucky..."

Today

I threw dust in the eyes of everything about seasonal affectations and dragged whoever was with me at the time outside. Finally, the rain, which so likes to haunt and drag around this part of the east coast, had called its long deluge off and the thermometer treated all of us to a day leaning just around sixty.

I’m not ready for beach weather. No, not yet. But a break in the grey monotony was undoubtedly nice.

Between bikes and dogs and a little bit of a hike down to the beach, I found myself blessed in the moment of just pure sunlight. Maybe I’m seasonally affected by everything I’m reading, but I think it’s ok once in a while to admit that life is just good in and of itself.

Confessions, these days, seem to be coming out of my mind quicker than most things in the past. Don’t get ahead of me. When I say confessions, I don’t mean deep and burning secrets. No. Finally, I am taking time to get to know one person who has stood in corners burning up over the last few years. Myself.

Every one of my roommates had a good laugh when I finally admitted to them that I thought I was a clean freak. You know, one of those people who adores their spray bottles full of caustic purifying agents. I am this. I prefer a clean house and a neat space more than most other things.

And so as some like to say, ‘a life unexamined is a life half-lived,’ it seems as if I have been missing minute details like this in my own life for several years. In other words, those things that—if you know me—you probably already know.

Of course this got me thinking, as all these things do. I have no stop button on where true life ends and symbolism begins—although the older I get, sometimes I wonder if they’re not all just one and the same. (Thank you literature, and a tiny passion for psychology.) Different can of worms, forgive me. I’ll try to stay on topic.

It got me thinking about identity and who we all think we are versus who we really are. In the last few weeks, I’ve been blindsided by the number of current and popular periodicals that are finally pointing at my peer group and using words like ‘overindulged,’ ‘apathetic,’ and god-forbid ‘lazy.’

I find myself agreeing, much to my own chagrin. Soccer Mom put it so simply a few nights ago, “You were raised in one of the most affluent times in known history. What else did you expect?” Well, Soccer Mom, I don’t know. Not this, I guess.

I’m lazy. I’ll admit it. Or, I was. I got a real shock when the ‘real world’ camped out on my doorstep and demanded rent and insurance payments. I sit sometimes in this house, that the sweat of my brow now allows me to live in, and wonder what I did with the money I had in college. Where did it go? Somewhere—and it took time with it. They’re partying somewhere else now. Just not on my bank statement.

I know times are hard. If you follow this blog at all, you’re aware of my gripe with the economy. Aware of my sarcasm and cynicism at the fact that some of the greatest people I know in the world are sitting at home in the mornings watching the View. I’m blessed to have the work I have. I am aware of that fact. I am blessed that families let me come into their homes and play with their children. Don’t count me among the ungrateful.

But I wonder, with all the finger-pointing and sardonic turn of phrase towards my aforementioned peer group, if we’ve all lost track of where our true identity will lie in the next ten to twenty years. When everybody else is gone and we’re left to run our own households and businesses and, oh geez—the government. I wonder, myself included, whether or not our piles of stuff are going to be shoddy protection to hide behind when the responsibility train rolls in.

I know the responsible ones are out there. I know a fair few of them. (Hat's off to you, Biggest Brother.) They’re buying houses, getting supplemental degrees and living on shoestring budgets that would impress great-granny-Hoover from 1931. So maybe some of that will rub off on the rest of us.

Truth be told, I feel sometimes like we think our identity is somewhere out there. Out there being some mythical planet where the Kardashians do exist and where they (whoever they are and wherever their power is bestowed) really do know all the answers and we’re just dying to hear them. And yes, on this planet, a new pair of shoes will satisfy every hope, dream and book deal you’ve ever wished upon. (You’re welcome, Dylan.)

But damn.it.all—that planet does not exist. There is no out there. There’s an in here. The place that encompasses those things that we actually need and not all those things that we just think we want. Like food for today, maybe tomorrow and a nice place to curl up at night. That place where the glory and the holy coincide and you find yourself not really dying to have all those things that seemed so important twelve seconds ago. (That place that we’re slowing destroying as fast as we can. Environmentalism rant will also be curbed.)

We’re all hungry. It’s true. All the time. For food and water and warmth and sex and coping mechanisms because sometimesthisisalljusttoomuchtohandle. But stuffing all those hungers into a race for more of what we aren’t is not going to stave them off. It will make them multiply.

So, I thought about it. (I also thought about how this post is entirely too long in its entirety and if you made it to thus point, maybe you should go eat something extravagant to wash away the taste of soapbox in your mouth.) And I think a little introspection and some good-old-fashioned caring would go a long way. I’ll leave religion out (for now), just to save another sixteen paragraphs of extremely pointed ranting.

In the end, what do you know you’re hungry for? And then, what are you starving for? Know the difference. It might mean everything.