The funny thing is that, despite my lack of organization, despite my disdain of long-term plans and schedules, my dislike of homogenous order, my claustrophobia in the face of structure, I am, deep-down inside, a control freak.

Which, I suppose, makes some sort of sense. I like my world messy, chaotic, spontaneous, surprising, complex, amorphous, free-form, wide open. I suppose subconsciously, I always try my damndest to optimize my surroundings to these parameters.

I am also a person who likes doing things the hard way whenever possible.

Call me maladapted. Call me masochistic.

But I can’t help but wonder if this kind of lifestyle is sustainable. It’s the kind of lifestyle that a person living on his own, completely independent, can perhaps afford, but I think of all the older people I meet who can no longer take care of themselves, who have no support structure, who have no one to turn to except for maybe the emergency department, and I can’t help but worry about the future.

Not to say that I’m not attached to this life, but my hope is that I won’t be around long enough to have to deal with it, but then again, I’ve also learned that you can’t always trust to hope.

And I can’t help but wonder, feeling as I am as if I were at a momentous crossroads, what comes next? The saner part of my brain tells me “wait and see,” but the part of me that never grew up, likely frozen at the age of 4, is yelling “gimme, gimme, gimme!”

I know that the what needs to happen is that I need to grow, and then change. Adapt, if you will. The way the world works changes as fast as the earth spins on its axis, and what worked for me yesterday is not guaranteed to work tomorrow, and if you are not growing, then you are by definition dying. Rotting. The soul ferments, then putresces.

I do not want to stay trapped on my 2 kilometer diameter world, running around in circles. Stuck. Transfixed.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel that my approach to life so far needs working on. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I think it’s gotten me pretty far so far, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve relied way too much on luck and on the kindness of others. Who I am today has been the work and struggle of many people, spanning several generations, and I don’t mean just history in a depersonalized sense. I think of my parents, my brother, my sister, my uncles, my aunts, my friends, my teachers. I even think of those whom I despise, those whom I hate. They, too, have shaped me.

And so I guess I don’t understand why this moment in time feels like an impending discontinuity. Why is this so different from all that has come before? Is it because I have reached the destination that I have been seeking for all these long years, struggling for more than a decade? Do I dare reify this moment and recognize that for once I am truly free to choose, and one way or the other, with luck or without it, I will be OK, and that no matter what, I cannot undo what has already been done?

Have I reached the zenith of my existence?

(That would be sad and pathetic.)

No. I know that’s not true. There is more of the world to see, more people to meet, more experiences to live.

I do not want to think of this as the calm before the storm, that false sense of tranquility that belies an impending catastrophe. I’ve mistaken these feelings before, thinking that somehow something would turn out the way I wanted it to, only to be faced with agonizing disappointment and perhaps even cataclysmic disaster.

I think, however, that I am learning a thing or two about hope. It isn’t so much what you hope for that matters. In fact, it’s probably best if you don’t hope for anything. The important thing is to recognize that you cannot imagine all the possible outcomes, and that perhaps, just perhaps, there is a chance that something good will happen, even if it’s nothing you expected at all. That is, I think, what it means to hope.

And so I remain hopeful, despite everything that has come before.