Tracking
I need to figure out where I’m going. I just checked the clock, and seven long hours still await on this flight due East to Taiwan. I think it’s one in the morning. But I left LAX at one in the morning. We must be moving back in time, but I’d thought, though quite nonsensically, that we’d be moving forward. Delayed so long ago on the runway, we’ll miss our connection to Thailand. And from Bangkok our connection to Siem Reap. The sky is warming with the glow of day. I’m tired, but eye mask and neck pillow and Tylenol pm – all combined – have yet to keep me sleeping in these cramped coach quarters. I’m midway across the Pacific, destined for Cambodia, and I desperately need to figure out where I’m going.
Twenty-two.
My golden birthday, actually! Born January 22nd, 1986, which leaves me now unfortunately far from childhood, and tipped too near toward forty. Suspended in a time where I need to be young, adventurous, spontaneous, slightly uncouth…while unabashedly ambitious, matured, ordered, on-track.
Problem is, I can’t quite see the track. I’d thought for times I was on one. A Guidance Counselor approach to life’s uncertainties. But no. No track here. A track runs smooth, brassy, determined, onwards to its end. Guiding unapologetically toward its aim, it carries its vehicle with enough speed to bump any minor deterrent off the path already blazed.
The wonder and temptation of a track is that it’s something tried and true. A track is built for many, offering the bold security of reaching ones destined end. And the misery of it’s the same.
As much as I fear being without the firm guidance of two lines stretching beyond me to touch the horizon, I fear, even more, finding myself confined to them.
Faith.
Seldom sandwiched between predictable, perceivable lines. Quite never, the more I think on it. The feeling of moving forward without them: overwhelming, debilitating, lonesome, and utterly invigorating. Trackless. Faithful.
What are the answers to life’s questions at twenty-two? I suppose that at ninety I could say, or at forty-four, or even at twenty-three. But then I won’t be resting in the same uncertainties I am today, the questions themselves will change. And I want more questions than answers. Perhaps not really want, but I’m beginning to think it’s what I need.
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