The Limit Approaches Infinity

I'm feeling a bit like I am in hiding as I am required to sit quietly in my apartment with the lights off and the blinds closed while graduation goes on in the quad. (as if anyone would see my little light as it is broad daylight, my windows are hidden by a significant quantity of shrubbery, and my apartment is on the opposite side of the building from the quad) To add further aggravation to my annoyance, my building has been opened up for the public to use the bathrooms and since my living room and the bathroom share a wall, I get to hear every proud parent and grandparent of a university grad flush. (Its only 9am- why can't people just pee before they leave the hotel? Why?) But I'm not complaining; I love this job.

So I'm sitting here, trying to focus my thoughts to pull together a piece on identity that I am to submit to an online magazine but all I want to do is get back to reading On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, my current literary crush. In my reading lately I have begun to notice a pattern of interest in literature about wandering. Or perhaps it is an interest in rebellion and rejection of the mainstream. It began with a bit of random reading about Bohemian culture in an unmentionably un-Bohemian bookstore and then grew when I received the book Boxcar Bertha for Christmas. From there, I began to explore some of the literature by an ex-workers' collaborative. My most recent read of this sort was Off the Map, which tells the story of two young women who travel Europe without map or money. It was a striking story of love, dreams, and the beautiful things that can happen when people fling themselves out into the world, trusting in the goodness of the universe to catch them.

Since doing all of this reading, I have been wondering, what would it be like to live without my current boundaries and conventions? To discard my current daily cares and seek only that which I find to be good and truthful? I cannot help but feel that I have neither the courage nor the willingness to go without my creature comforts and live with the reckless abandon that the characters in my books exemplify. Or do I? The essence of a life without limits is that it does not have to look the same as anyone else's life without limits- not Bertha's or Jacks or Kika and Hib's (the women from Off the Map).

I ponder, what would our world be like if we were less worried about how much money we were going to make this year, what kind of car we were going to drive, what song we would upload to our iPod next, or where we would buy our next cup of coffee? What if we did abandon these material affairs and instead focused on being good neighbors and good inhabitants of our environment? Once freed from material cares what would our lives look like? How much more time would we have to really and truly appreciate life? How much higher value would we place on love and freedom of the spirit?

How often can any of say that we have truly loved? Loved without exclusion or condition? Even love we have tried to box in and put borders on. How we should and shouldn't act when in love, who we should and shouldn't love, what lengths we should and shouldn't go to for someone we love. And freedom, true freedom, freedom where our spirits are completely unbound to worldly demands, have any of us ever really felt that? I doubt that I have and yet I know that I want to, that I will seek it with a passion until the day I die.

And so if we free our hearts and minds of material ties what of our ties to convention? Is it really so important that we cater to the expectations of those around us? What would happen if I decided to sleep outside on the grass one night instead of in my bed? Or if I talked a little to loud or shared my opinion a little too much? Or if printed my own literature and distributed it for free instead of incessantly submitting it to the approval of magazine editors? (wait, I think I'm already doing that here) Or worse yet, wore colors that didn't match and relished in it? Or didn't shower for three days? Or took the time to write real letters instead of emails? Or turned in a short story for an assignment that was an essay? This may all sound like minor rule-breaking but once we start creating our own rules and definitions, will we want to stop?

Yet I write all of this while driven into hiding by my job contract. So I am a hypocrite or a subversive or both. This quandary challenges me even further with its apparent dichotomy. However, as was recently pointed out to me, most dichotomies are illusory and I'm sure the current one is no exception. Perhaps it is possible to color not just outside the lines but inside them as well. Perhaps it is possible to allow our jobs to have our minds for a few hours a day without having our hearts or compromising our freedom.