I Don't Know What I Want
"I don't know is the same thing as 'I love', 'I let go.'" (A. Watts)
I have never known what I want.
My senior year high school yearbook quote was, “I don’t know if I’m wide awake or dreaming, but all I ever need is everything.” (Counting Crows). By the age of 18, I already felt some shame about this. The shame didn’t come from inside me. What came from inside me was the “everything” part. The culture (and once or twice a specific person) told me this sort of attitude was narcissistic, unfocused, and worst of all (to me) irresponsible. Especially when I had the ability to fit myself into a container and get down to business.
When I realized I didn’t have to choose a college major and could instead do “interdisciplinary studies" I was quite relieved. I was freed to take whatever classes were of interest to me, something one of my advisors found reckless. “What do you mean you don’t have a proposal for your major? You mean this is just the “Julie Meslin Major” and you’re just taking whatever classes you like?” It felt like a trick question. I knew better than to give the actual answer which was, of course, DUH! What I said was, “Oh yes, I have a plan. Nobody asked to see it before. I can write it it up for you.” Box checked.
In my 20’s, when we were all supposed to quite literally be getting down to business, I twisted and turned in existential angst, flinging myself to far corners of the country and globe to try to find the shoe that fit. The problem was that everything I touched seemed to turn to fascination. So many shoes! So shiny! So comfortable! So sexy! So practical!
Even though I was curious, and wanted to try things, I didn’t want to identify as anything. My nightmare were parties where people would ask the dreaded, “What do you do?” I wanted to say, “I write letters. I sleep. I work at a school. I’m going to school. I draw. I read poems. I scramble eggs.” I know that people ask this as a way to get a grip on who they are dealing with. So I didn’t answer in this way. Just like with the college advisor who wanted my plan on paper, I gave pat answers. The words were like marbles rolling around my mouth; they were hard, and tasted like nothing.
Well, I’m 45 and I’m giving up the ghost. I don’t know what I want and I’m (starting to get) over feeling bad about. I really did think that by now I would have figured it all out. What’s nice about midlife is that all the people who had figured it out a decade or two ago are back in the same boat as me now. Everyone is looking around asking, “Is this it?” Yup. This is it. We don’t know what we’re doing! Isn’t it great? I imagine myself sliding over to make room for them in the row boat, passing them a sandwich I brought for the trip.
Today I listened to this talk by Alan Watts: YouTube link
What he says around minute 15 is that “…this I don’t know is the same thing as ‘I love.’ ‘I let go.’ ‘I don’t try to force or control.’ It’s the same thing as humility.” I felt relief wash over me, to hear it affirmed. To hear the opposite of what we mostly hear. Watts thinks getting it together and being serious is to not know.
Not-knowing is not really about it being “great” or “freeing.” It’s just about telling the truth. The truth is complicated. We are complex beings in complex situations in a complex time. I prefer to acknowledge it because the alternative is painful. I prefer the full-body-mind-soul stretch to the me-in-a-box.
xo
Julie