Reminders

I've had several references during the past few days to Alice in Wonderland and Lewis Carroll; higher in frequency than I would normally notice.  The written book of Alice in Wonderland (actually called "Through the Looking-Glass" if I remember right) always reminds me of my father's best friend Bill Kruger.

Bill was a Children's Literature professor at the University of Millikan in Illinois, a private university.  I didn't get the chance to meet Bill until I was in my mid-twenties, but I'm glad I had the limited time I did have to meet him.  Bill and I turned out to be quite similar in thinking, and got along very well, often disagreeing with my father in the same ways on the same points.  But more to the point, any time I was in the area, I would stop by and visit with Bill for a few hours.  This turned out to total about 6 hours in a few less trips.  After one such visit, I returned home and received in the mail a week or so later a copy of "Through the Looking-Glass" from Bill.  He had handwritten a note to me, stating the book was well worth my time, but more importantly, that he really believed I would enjoy the book.

At the time I thought it was a children's story, though of course one that could be mined by adults for insights.  I resisted reading the book, and it sat on the shelf for years.  Bill died a year or so after that last visit, and the mailed book.  I never did get around to reading it, and I am sorry I never read it.  I would feel better about it if I had made and effort, but I actively avoided reading it.  I don't remember if he actually asked me to read it and tell him what I thought, or if my guilty mind is tacking on that admonition.  Now I feel a twinge of guilt every time I think of the book that collected dust on the shelf for so long.  I've since lost track of the book, and that adds another twinge.  I hope to find it some day, and I hope that I had the forethought to put the handwritten note into the cover of the book.

It occurs to me writing now, that this is a fairly unique experience.  How many other twenty-somethings would search out and meet with their father's best friend from another state for chats?  And if I didn't write this here, who would ever know of this experience?  Or the tasks I feel I owe Kruger?  I saw that Kruger's children had moved on; they were not close to him in later life, and I wonder how much his death really affected them.  Granted, there's no real way of me knowing, but I find the bonds of family to often be arbitrary.  As the saying goes, friends are the family you choose.  I wonder if Bill is remembered for his position as father more than his abilities and personality.  Father is fine, but it seems a sad loss to forget the other aspects of the man.  My father and Bill's other contemporaries certainly remember him as 'Bill,' or 'Kruger' rather, more than 'father.'  How long will I remember him?  How long will I feel I owe him a debt?  If memory of a man is his form of immortality, how long will Bill be remembered?  Is my memory of him the furthest reach into the future Bill will have?  Is there anyway I can pass his memory on?  Or should I look to my own legacy?

These are reasons I've tried to realize my father and other dear members of my family for who they are, not only their relation to me.  I feel it's my responsibility to remember them for who they are.  I think children often develop a deep respect for their parents as they get older, precisely because they learn to see them as the people they are in addition to the parent they were.  I count myself lucky I seemed to be ahead of the curve.

Purpose?

Is there a purpose to peoples' lives?  I've wondered this since I was a child.  Religion has one believe there is a purpose... but given the amount of people I've seen profess that life has a guided purpose and the ways those people have lived their lives, I've become very skeptical.  The most I can believe is that, if there is a creator, he has created people with potential only; aptitudes.  People have abilities, and one would believe that the purpose of those abilities is to use them, which then transfer purpose to people.  But as far as people having a purpose and a destiny... it's a good wish, I'm not seeing it though.

I feel like I've missed my purpose.  Having wanted to believe in a purpose so long, I searched for it, I looked for portents and signs, and after years of searching, I've turned up empty handed.  I don't know my purpose.  I don't know that there is one.  People tell themselves little lies to get through the day, but I'm tired of lying.  I don't even really lie to myself, I just tell myself that if such a thing exists, then I should act as if it exists, so that I may come to know it. 

I just realized the real question I have, the buried one I haven't been able to see, is, "Am I worthy of being liked, respected, and loved?"  I feel like, without knowing my purpose, I'm failing, I'm floating on a sea of Nihilism.  I believe in Existentialism, that we create our own existence, and I'm a fan of post-Existentialism, that things have meaning because we imbue them with meaning.  Without direction, without purpose of some kind, I feel like I'm some stagnant nothing. 

The question deserves an answer, and the obvious one is "yes."  But, it feels like a hollow answer.  "Yes," is the answer we desire, the answer we desperately want to believe... but do we believe it?  If you can lead a horse to water, though can't make him drink, then you can come to the correct answer without truly internalizing it and believing it.  It remains an empty answer. 

Now I'm going to try to believe it. 

New Leaves

I wonder... it is my nature....

I wonder about many things.  Sometimes it seems the possibilities that stretch out before me are too many, that I can't keep track of them all.  I always have this feeling that there is a reset button somewhere; that sometime, when I want or need it bad enough, I will be able to push it and get a "do-over."  I know somewhere in my mind that such a thing is not possible or true, but I can't shake the feeling that the button is there, waiting for when I will need it. 

Maybe it's because it's still just me.  I don't have a family of my own, I don't have a significant other or kids.  I don't have a professional job, and I haven't accomplished the things that I thought I should have accomplished before I became a "Man."  It's still just me and my thoughts, floating.  No roots, no benchmarks of achievement to tie me down... I'm still waiting for my life to start. 

I've been preparing, always preparing... waiting for my chance to accomplish something worthwhile.  I've been cautious, always thought through my decisions, always tried to act rationally and in my best interest.  I wish I could blame Asperger's Syndrome, or my nerdy tendencies for my shortcomings, but they would be excuses, while the fault is my own.  I've avoided the pitfalls of wanton living.  My biggest failing has been inaction.  It seems like most of my friends have grown up by mistake.  They bit off more than they could chew, and ended up with marriages, children, families, houses, divorces, and everything else that signifies adulthood and the real world.  I have none of those trappings, but I have none of those signifiers either.  I'm a 29 year old boy.