Thoughts at the Crossroads

Today is the third in a series of discouraged days. It has been very sunny and beautiful outside, and the trees along the street are unfolding more and more leaves with every day, and everyone is coming out of their houses and "making glad" the streets. But there is little corresponding jollity within me.

But nothing else is to be expected if I sit inside as much as I do -- though I did walk to the Zwölf-Apostel graveyard with J. yesterday -- and I'm still uncertain what to do next. It takes me a very long time to figure out what I want to do. Part of the reason for this is that my years in school were not calculated to help me develop my interests, talents, or personality. Of course I read many books and learned many things on my own, but I did it unintelligently, so that I didn't get nearly as much out of it as I could, and there was nearly nothing in my environment that lent any new dimension to what I was doing. For example in literature, no matter what I read -- Shakespeare or George Eliot or Dickens -- I had to understand it through imagination or through my own feelings rather than, for example, through knowing people who resembled their characters, or knowing about English history from school. This is why, for the worst weeks in Grade 11, I couldn't properly read books any more; I was not able to tie anything to the real world -- if that makes sense. George Eliot and Charlotte Bronte I could, however, almost always read, because their books are largely about isolation, repression by environment, etc. Anyway, in university and here in Berlin, the conditions were and are much more favourable. I am at the point now where I can "find myself," but this process is considerably hampered by the pressure I am under to choose a bachelor programme and career. It is a little humiliating but true to say that, at twenty-one, I am in most ways basically at the point where most people are (or seem to be) at fifteen or sixteen.

What I would love to do is to have a year or two where I can just work on the things that suit me best, in the way that works best for me. I have no intention of sitting around and doing nothing. But if I had a congenial piano teacher, if I were free to write and draw and read and play music as I like, if I could go to museums and art galleries and concerts without worrying about the cost, if my siblings would go and play soccer or badminton or whatever in parks with me, if I could read in many subjects, and perhaps have a small pleasant job, just for one year, I think it would finally compensate for the deficiencies of my school years and gently close that chapter of my life once and for all. To tell the truth, all of these things I could already have done, but I haven't yet cast off the self-doubt and habits of procrastination and restlessness that probably keep me from doing these things properly.

Anyway, that was all the complaining I wanted to do. Now I am, again, ready to admit that my problems are very small peas indeed.