What I (think I should) like
(The Thinker in The Gates of Hell at the Musée Rodin.)
I've always seemed to have an unfortunate amount of trouble telling the difference between what I actually like and am interested in versus what I think I should like and be interested in. This is par for the course for a boy just emerging from the shelter of family and school into a bigger world and a bigger identity — but that was more than a decade ago for me.
Now as a man past thirty, one would think I would have a very clear idea of what I actually like, or want, or am interested in. I've made significant progress in other aspects of my life, learned how to do a good job and earn a living, how to build and maintain a strong, loving relationship with my wife, how to plan a life and make things happen. I've been attempting to pick up old pursuits of drawing and writing, more regularly and seriously than ever before. And yet there are still those idle moments when I feel like that lost boy searching for "myself", for the "meaning of my life".
I think a part of me does know and directly feel my likes and interests and wants, but I've yet to fully regain the knack (perhaps lost at some point in a precocious childhood) to simply sit, listen to what that part of me is saying, to feel what that part of me is feeling; instead by default I still seem to experience the world through a translucent wall, a mental filter of my own making that refuses to be bypassed.
Self-discovery remains one of my biggest projects in my writing, and I continue to struggle against the tendency to just look inward, introspectively meditate, seek some coherent internal understanding. This is par for the course for a young boy who feels detached and misunderstood, but the man I want to be looks outward instead of in, forward instead of back, approaches the world seeking connection instead of withdrawing from it, risks failure and embarrassment instead of playing it safe and trodding the same well-worn mental ruts. (To more, and more ambitious attempts!)
This essay is part of a month-long series of 30 essays.