Michael For me to know and you to find out Kich:
I'd just like to say that, especially with emphasis on the part about avoiding rash decisions that may make a mess of your life, knowing if it's rash or following your heart is really, really, REALLY hard. I wouldn't be up at 6 am otherwise failing utterly at concentration.
Just to give a bit of background to why I'm saying this (and because I feel like talking about it and venting frustration coming from fear about making the wrong decision), I'm considering trying to find a way to extend my stay in Germany basically permanently by asking into how I would get a work permit, looking for part-time jobs, and basically saying fuck it to my family, friends, and any aspirations of grad school stateside in order to stay inside of a society that I feel much more in harmony with.
The idea of at best ending up at one of my top choice grad schools where pompous dipshitt professors are gonna try to con me into believing that they can teach me more about German or Germanic languages and culture than the actual people in the society itself, and into believing that the pseudo-religion of argument and publication that is academia is worth paying homage to is really difficult to sell myself on.
On one hand there's the very convincing, slightly static-ey part of my mind giving me the "don't do it kiddo" speech, but on the other hand there's the argument that there's nothing worthwhile won without loss and risk - also damming up that later argument is the fact that living in Ohio is somewhat ok at the best of times and utterly ambition-destroying at the worst of times, and that basically no one who's fallen in on the intellectual or spiritual sides of life has a place in that culture. If I don't end up being lucky enough to be both accepted by and offered a teaching stipend from one of about a dozen grad institutions in the next 30 days or so, then I will have nowhere at all to go stateside except back with my parents trying to find one of the very sparse part-time jobs in shitty rural Ohio. You can try to ignore it but at least as far as I've experienced it for myself it doesn't get easier to ignore the widening gulf between your motivations, values, and personal perspective and those of everyone else.
It's a very seductive temptation, as most all real temptations are, but the question then comes as to whether seductive is necessarily bad. True it's obscuring me from realizing something and it's powerfully disturbing, but it's also offering something. Do you wanna sleep with the pretty lady who might turn out to be really bad for your life in all sorts of spectacular ways, or do you wanna be the loser who replies no with the dubious promise to himself of "I'll see the wisdom in that in my later years."
So I suppose my real purpose in writing/asking this is to see if anyone can come up with a sufficiently good argument that might sway me to one decision or another, and perhaps help me in avoiding making a mistake that I can't perceive well right now. Obviously the decision is mine to make in the end, but some help in seeing clearly is always nice. The other stressing factor among legion of them is that I have basically this week to come to a decision about asking into living here if I want that, and then as I'm given to understand it my window of opportunity closes.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for providing a bit more background on the dilemma you are facing. It helps to have something solid in mind in terms of an example of a real life situation, rather than just speculating about what someone is talking about.
That said, there is really no easy answer to your questions. I'm speaking from 58 years of experience, and I can relate to the dilemma you are in, having been in a few of my own in my time.
Let me just say that whatever decision you take, you should be just fine. Don't worry too much about "making a mess" of your life. If you end up buying lemons, you can always make and sell lemonade. Everything is redeemable in time and depends on your attitude and approach to the situation. And being as young as you are, you have time to correct any perceived "mistakes" you might make at this point. So, don't necessarily let that weigh too heavily on your mind when considering what you want to do.
With regard to your family and such, you might consider just WHO is living your life for you: YOU or someone else! Who is going to have to live with the immediate affect of any decisions you take, in other words: YOU or someone else? In other words, is someone else going to bail you out of any decision you take based on having made it according to their criterion? And would you want to have made those decisions based on your own examination and evaluation of your situation or at the behest of someone else's evaluation who won't have to "live" with that choice in YOUR skin. It's your aspirations and dreams you have to follow. Not someone else's for you.
And finally, what I have learned in over half a century of living is that you have to follow your own TRUTH, whatever that might be in the present moment. Nothing is ever permanent in terms of certain choices we make in life. You can always make changes. It just depends on whether or not you want to step outside your comfort zone and take a chance that you might learn something that if you hadn't taken that road you may never really know or be sure about how it may have turned out.
It's kind of like that old Rolling Stone's song: You can't always get what you want. / But if you try sometimes you just might find / You'll get what you need.
There is a small poem I read one time that was hand-written on the inside of a used book cover which seemed quite profound and read: Be like the bird / Halting in flight / On a limb too slight / Feels it give way beneath him, / Yet sings / knowing he has wings. (It was attributed to V. Hugo, although I never bothered to look it up to confirm it.)
And then there is this quotation from a greeting card that I copied down:
I have learned to be happy where I am.
I have learned that locked within the moments
of each day are all the joys, the peace,
the fibers of the cloth we call life. . .
The meaning is in the moment.
There is no other way to find it.
You feel what you allow yourself to feel
each and every moment of the day.
And finally, there is the quotation from Wei Wu Wei (otherwise known as Terrance Gray, an Englishman writing under that pen name, from his book
Fingers Pointing Toward the Moon): "Wise men don't judge: they seek to understand."
Wishing you the best, whatever decision you take.
In peace,
Ian