Talk to me for a few hours straight, and I will guarantee you two things. First: At least one of us will be entertained throughout the entire conversation. Second: I will tell you little, if anything about myself. I have an uncanny ability to extract juicy tidbits from others, yet when it comes to my own stories, secrets, and sins, I remain reticent. I can name on one hand how many people know anything I consider substantive about the real me.

   The reason for shutting people out isn't anything sinister, nor is it a ploy to make myself more mysterious. No, the reason is much more boring: I am quite boring. I have not journeyed to many far off exotic lands nor have I accomplished any great deeds. I have produced nothing of artistic, spiritual, or scientific significance yet consume all three in great abundance. All my loves have gone unrequited... all my battles remain unfought. I have been punished with banality for merely living my life.

   During my first weeks of college, one of my professors asked if we were living or just existing. I, without a shadow of a doubt, just exist. I am here, however, to throw down the gauntlet for all those who just exist. I have listened to people who have had full lives, and I envy them- oh how I envy them- but despite experiencing more than I, they all started sounding the same. I could no longer stand hearing about how awesome this is and how I should really try that... the mush of what they said had become predictable- boring, even. Maybe it is due to their inability to tell stories, or maybe their stories were not worth telling... but maybe my stories were; I am not saying we are better or worse than those with more lived lives- we are their equals. I have for too long bit my tongue, hesitated because I didn't think my stories were good enough. They are.

   I may not know what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel, but every year as far as I can remember, I have had the heat of Las Vegas take my breath away. I may not have accomplished anything, but all the things I have started speak volumes about who I have become. I know a Scorsese from a Spielberg; I have spoken to many Gods on many occasions; I understand a great many things from dinosaurs to black holes. Though none of my love stories panned out, they each have more vibrancy than so many that have- there is nothing more bland than Happily Ever After. And about fights... all I have to say about fights is to beware a pacifist’s scars because they cut deeper than flesh could ever go.

   It is true banality is my punishment, but I get to chose whether or not I suffer.

   Invariably, you are destined for more hellos than you are goodbyes. Meeting people is often accompanied with fanfare and introductions, but ending relationships usually occur over long periods of time with seldom a glance backward. People like using the term drift… as in “we drifted apart.” The image that accompanies this word is easy to visualize, but its place in describing goodbyes is quite inaccurate. Drifting conjures an image of two people, on wood planks huddling in the middle of a choppy ocean; it implies that, through no intent or planning, the currents of life pulled these two people apart so they are left bobbing in isolation. This isn’t how it happens...

    I prefer to think of relationships as lights in a dark room. Being alone, friendless, in the dark, we welcome the light of friendship. It is blinding in its magnificence at first, and then comforting as we get used to it. Things become clear and life comes into focus. The light wards off things that creep in the shadows and allows you to expand your perspective. The light makes you more visible to new friends and many more lights get turned on. Soon, the room is full of light. You are quite happy now, experiencing things you never knew you hadn’t experienced. You leave your first light and see what other lights have to offer. Searching every nook and cranny of your life, you become who you are while failing to see the first light dim and shut off completely. You don’t notice because the darkness left from the first's absence has already been filled.

    To drift is to deny responsibility, which is ultimately more selfish than actually abandoning the friend in the first place. Chasing other lights, while at first seems ungrateful, ultimately accepts one’s role in leaving while still acknowledging the things the first friend gave you- as someone who pierced through the darkness with a hello and faded into the light without a goodbye.

  I have harbored many not so secret desires to be many things. I’ve wanted to be an author, a creator of comic strips, a restaurant chain owner, a stand-up comic, a children’s television show producer, and currently, though medical school bound, a movie director. These impulses usually fade or lack the impetus to warrant full fledged following. Yet, for as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be either a paleontologist or an astronaut.

  Let it be known that I wouldn't be good at either of these professions; I tire easily from just digging in my mother’s garden and I am confused by even the simplest of calculations let alone astrophysics. Yet, time and time again, I find myself daydreaming about brushing dust off dinosaur fossils in the North American Badlands or orbiting our closest neighbor- Venus.

  Clearly, both of these careers are quite different from each other. One requires digging into the earth and one involves leaving it, yet, to me, both of them have the same appeal. Paleontology deals with the way life was, millions of years before anything even resembling humans existed. Astronomy deals with mankind's destiny though untouched by anyone.

  I, with my feet firmly planted in the present, would essentially be a tourist to the past or a visitor to the future. The draw of these careers is that they offer some sort of enlightenment; a glimpse of what life was like before petty emotion or what life will be like after rising above emotion. I would only be enlightened at work- once I came home, everything would be back to normal and I would just be another resident of the present. Therein lies the draw of these two jobs; I am too cowardly to either live simply or to soar to greatness that I have to achieve these things by burying myself or leaving the planet altogether. And I couldn't even do that.