Tonight is Prom night in my hometown. Tonight hundreds of teens are getting dressed up, going out, and...well, you can finish that sentence as you see fit. Five years ago I was among them. God, that feels like so long ago. And yet, I don't know that I've traveled very far from that place--that place in life where you dress up and pretend to be a grown-up, where you think that because you've had some education you are therefore a walking encyclopedia of knowledge; that place where you believe that adventure and excitement and opportunity are all freely available to you if only you will seize upon them, and where you have been told that things "can only get better from here."
And while I catch myself laughing at the naivety of the young people I see around me, sometimes I have to stop and wonder if I am so very different from those I am so quick to judge. Am I so very different in being painfully aware of my HERE-NESS, especially in contrast to the ELSEWHERE-NESS of most of my friends? Am I any less cocky for having four extra years of edification to call mine? And really, other than a few numbers difference on our ID, what is there to show the world that I am utterly unlike the 16-year-olds I served food to and cleaned up after this evening?
...I hear about people from high school and college who are getting big important "adult" jobs, having babies, going back to school, or moving across the country and I tell myself that I'm happy for them and not at all jealous. And 90% of the time I really do feel proud of those I love. I want them to be happy and successful in life and in love. But damn it, I want that for me too. I want to KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a master plan of perpetual journey tramping to be had by me, and that this game of "dress up" and "pretend" is more than just an exercise in preparation for some distant time to come. I don't want to wake up and realize that life, like some kind of horror film or inescapable dream, is merely an extension of high school.
Now wouldn't that be a nightmare.
