Libération

Last week I decided to leave off university and set forth into the job market. So this coming weekend I might begin working as a cleaner for a lady in Tempelhof, and we'll see if I'll take more part-time or 'mini' jobs. Eventually I hope to work in something which trains me to a satisfyingly thorough standard in some field, because I would like to do more than one kind of work very well; but I feel happy and excited about this already. There are two other job applications I sent off, and we'll see if any reply arrives eventually.

The last year of university reminded me of school, too, so now I feel emancipated from educational institutions in general. 17 years, including kindergarten, is quite enough.

Even better, I feel old enough and confident enough to make my own decisions and to deal with whatever impediments and whatever good things they cause.

To a degree there isn't much of an alternative. Whenever I begin repressing instincts and adhering to the expectations of others, I feel as if I will never grow out of childhood, and never be a whole person, or even a person whom other people can rely upon, if I continue in that manner. It leaves questions unresolved which reappear later and with which one must deal eventually. So I refuse to continue and get an undergraduate degree simply because it is generally believed to be a prerequisite for decent work.

This seems like a dramatic line of argument to append to a declaration of intent to leave university, but to paraphrase Pope, trivialities at times give rise to big events. It is an open-ended question what to do so that I will arrive at the age of eighty knowing that I have done well and that I belong; and that I have laid a sufficient foundation to live happily for some twenty or thirty years more if need be. I have learned that it is best to start as you mean to go on, and if it means relying on one's own common sense and instincts in small things now, so much the better when big things present themselves later. Which sounds a bit morbid, but not nearly as morbid as the feeling of fighting against everything and hating the necessity to die, once the Grim Reaper approaches; or of living half a life long beforehand.

Besides I think I can permit myself the luxury of making my own mistakes, because I have no one relying on me yet. If I had three or four children . . . maybe not an entirely good idea. :)