You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
...
The conversation that we had this morning is ironic to me now. "See sister, life is change. I don't know how you can survive in this life if you can't adapt to change. There is nothing to life, except for change." He repeated it three or four times as is his wont, and I felt strangely comforted though we weren't talking about me. I guess now I know why. It's hard though, to be 27 and really have no idea what you want to do with your life. I'll be 28 this year. I hate that dreaded question, "so, what do you do?" as if that somehow defines what I'll accomplish and what I'll ever accomplish. "I'm a
secretary." Sometimes that word is anathema. Aimee summed it up when she asked candidly, "why would you want to be a
secretary?" It seems like one of those jobs that shouldn't exist any longer. I used to call myself an "administrative assistant" but somehow that felt like me trying to pull a fast one on myself. I am smarter than both of my bosses. That is the part that kills me.
It's not even so much about the money, because Ryan and I have been doing really well lately with side jobs. Business is steadily increasing but I know it'll never get to the point that I can quit my day job. First of all, benefits. Second of all, my shitty entry level job is what pays the bills around this place. As long as the bills get paid I'm happy, and the bills get paid. So why the thick residue of shame on my tongue when I announce to an old acquaintance that I'm not actually a guidance counselor, but the counselor's.... secretary? I guess in a way I feel that I've been a slacker for not having a more glamorous job by now. When I was in college I had this beautifully idealistic vision that once I graduated, the world would open itself up to me, I would find some glorious occupation, and I would thus be able to pay mom and dad back for the tens of thousands that they lavished upon my higher education. The world is cutting though, and damn if it isn't hard to pick one thing out of eight thousand interests to go after.
So you reevaluate what is important to you. I am madly in love with the man I'm married to. Everyone at my job really likes me. I think I have a special knack for building rapport with the kids. My boss' nickname for me is "ass-saver," so I know that at least I'm appreciated. Maybe I should suck it up and stop complaining about something that
really isn't much more than a title. There are several kids who pull me aside when they want advice or a caring ear because they trust me. Some of them actually call me their guidance counselor. These are the things that will mark who I am, I think, more than the title I hold for 8 hours of the day. And I'm sure that even that will change and change and change, and this brief storm will become shadows and dust. I guess I would rather be in this world with what I consider a job that's below my talents than in a world that would push all of the above aside and say, "yes but you
share a bed with a felon." Titles are funny things.
