Five Years

five years ago i was living in new york doing the ivy league thing.  a lot has happened since then. last night kt and i got to talking.  two questions:  what were the last five years like, and what about the next five?  we never got to the prediction stage in the conversation.  strangely enough we were interrupted by a phone call from taiwan, and stephanie lu and i played catch up about the last seven years.  a lot more has happened in seven years.  i never would have predicted more than one or two small things, so i guess there really is no point in projecting the future. but in a way, that's what planning is-- you say you're going to do A and B, knowing full well that mystery option C is going to sneak up and usurp the position.  but if you didn't have A and B lined up, C never would have come along.  

this is what usually works for me, so people like my father who knew exactly what they wanted to do from the age of seven and never deviate from it, they amaze me.  but i think this is not the norm.  and knowing my father, that makes sense.  i have never met anyone with less concern for what people think.  self conscious, embarrassed... though good at making the kids feel that way at times, these were, as far as i can tell, foreign concepts to him.  it's an admirable, but potentially dangerous trait.  he was deeply convicted, focused, and maybe too brilliant for his own good.  he was the hardest person to get to know, but well worth the effort.  his drive drove me right to the edge of my sanity at times, but is was amazing to watch his tireless pursuit of ideals.  i miss it.  

he could not understand my decision to leave cornell, deviate from the plan, or in his words, throw my future away.  my sister convinced me that he would never speak to me again if i went through with it.  but i have a streak of my father in me, and i didn't care what anyone thought about me transferring to an "inferior institution."  about three years later, he let it go.  but he never talked about my future after that.  it's not that he didn't care, but more like he had done all he could.  i, like most people, do not know what the next years will look like.  but i think that's ok.  i think it makes me listen more and rely more on god, on the people around me.  it challenges that independent detweiler streak.

not having a clear picture forces me to look harder, be more inquisitive about the world, the nature of things, and my place in it.  and i hope that it will keep me from pursuing anything with too much vigor, where i end up neglecting or hurting people for the sake of some goal, however worthy.  that would be like viewing everything through the lens of a microscope, seeing more that everyone else, yet seeing nothing they see.  it would make relating and loving immensely difficult.  in a way my father was that focused on his passions, but i know he loved very much.  it was just hard to understand sometimes.  as for my future, i am expectant, but without exact expectations.