The Winter of '89

"There are things I'd like to do that you don't believe in. I would like build something, but you'd never see it happen. And there's this burning, like there's always been. I've been so alone and I've never been so alive."
~Third Eye Blind

I was born in the winter of 1989 on a brooding February morning. Twenty years ago, I began to breathe my own air, began life as an individual, carving out a place for myself in the world. Who could have imagined for me the growth and destruction I would see in only two decades? Who could have predicted me heading to Oxford next fall? Who could have anticipated my hopes, desires, and dreams? The raw potential of a newborn is an immense and powerful force.

And this force never flees from us. I believe, instead, that it continues to grow, to stretch, to thrive if we feed it. But we must remember to feed it! It frustrates me to find within myself a growing laziness, a growing turpitude in my work ethic, as if I could just slow down a moment when the going gets rough. The word "just" carries the burden of illustrating my point. That is a deceitful word designed to make the argument seem reasonable. It is anything but reasonable! What my sloth would require of me is to calm down and stop trying to get the most of my education, my love, my life.

This mindset is echoed in my culture, in my age, and my peers. I'm twenty now and I should probably start to settle down concerning my questions about God. I should probably be reasonable about my life goals. I should probably doing a lot of things but what I'm going to do is be defiant. What I'm going to do is continue to do what I did on the first day of my life. I will breath my own breath, declare my independence, and tear open the social norms of my culture and assert my right to a life lived to my definition of a good life.

I burn and yearn for a future and this present which is ripe and rich with opportunity. I will falter, but I will not fall. I will ache, but I will not die. I will live. Twenty years of life have taught me how.