stones in my shoes

I remember being little, about five or so, and sitting at the dining room table trying to stifle yawns at one of my parents' dinner parties. My chubby cheeks had been pinched raw and lipsticked with the greeting of the guests, and I was anxious to have cake and go to my room. One of the guests turned to me, smiling;"So, tell me, what do you want to be when you grow up?"

Oh dear.

It was that question. The question adults feel compelled to ask kids, usually for entertainment purposes. The thing was, I'd been asked it before, and I always just shrugged and said "I dunno", because I honestly couldn't see that far ahead. But this time, the answer shot out of my mouth, clear as a bell, startling even me with its decisiveness;

"I want to be a lunchroom teacher."

The adults roared with laughter, and my cheeks burned with shame. I didn't understand their reaction, because my answer was delivered with complete earnestness. Once the swell of embarrassment subsided, it was explained to me that there was no such job(and if there was, you'd have to be union). I moved on to loftier career aspirations after that. And kept them to myself.

But what if that night was a signpost, one reading "Simple life, a million km away"? Was my answer an inadvertant display of unambitiousness? Was it a precursor to my desire for a life less complicated by corporate snakes and ladders, glass ceilings, and colour-collared workforces? A yearning for a life peppered with the love of friends and family, a cute apartment, a dog, and the constant feeding of my insatiable lust for armchair anthropology? I told myself I was content to waitress the rest of my days, so long as I had the freedom to figure myself out. It seemed a fair trade, a bit of financial hardship for some emotional integrity.

The principle that work is a part of your life, not the sole governing force has always guided my hand when making life choices. I loved learning, but I hated school. I dropped out several times, for several years, and had no interest in going to university or college to find a career. I figured it would be an even larger-scale, socially apocalyptic nightmare than high school (And you had to pay, thousands of dollars for the privalege of your suffering!) No, I was content to coast along the periphery of bottom end jobs, relatively unskilled, because while they offered no real security or stimulation, at least there was always a multitude of them to choose from to stave off boredom. And while I lacked a structured learning environment, I took it upon myself to read and absorb the life that was going on all around me, to live through observation, trial and (numerous) error. I assumed it would suffice.

But it hasn't.

Lately, I have been overcome with the panic of having immobilized myself with the wrong choices in life. I take it to bed like a joyless lover, I wake up to its unwelcome face. It sits in my guts like indigestion;
Didn't go to school.
Never took up a trade.
Wasted education money on trip to France.
Friends all have careers or are in school.
Am nearing thirty, live alone in basement.

Snippets of pitiful self-doubt float around my mouth, too afraid to be spoken. I make myself feel heavy with my alarming lack of direction. My wants for a simple life grow in proportion with my wants for nicer furniture, for a pet, for a life above ground and beyond fear. My concept of "simple" has reached new heights of complexity because of this. And I feel tired, dead, dog-tired by the pace of life in this city, a city whose pace of life has far exceeded its inhabitants' capacity to live it. To fulfill even the most unmaterialistic want is expensive. And the bottom end jobs are paying the bills, but creating a far greater emotional deficit. I don't feel accomplished, or enriched by what I do for money. I don't feel I'm doing anything of real social value beyond being as decent and kind a person as I can be. Like a lot of big-city folks, I live in the universe of my own backyard, and the gate is rusting on its hinges, making it very hard to open.

So here I sit, once again, with my panicky confusion. Scratching my head, trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. I try to navigate my way through the human traffic along downtown Toronto streets, with honking cars, rising dust, heapfuls of hope and bellyfulls of unsureness. In the parallel universes of dreams and real life, the questions remain the same. Do we ever really grow up? Or do we just grow into lives anchored by the gravity of other people and their expectations of us? Is there peace and quiet if we follow the prescribed course of education, profession, marriage, and parenthood? Is there internal chaos and lifelong regret if we don't?

I don't know, I really don't know. I hope the answers will come someday. And till they do, I will tread in these thought-provoking, heavy shoes, and try not to trip on the cracks.