October 19th, Two Thousand and Eight.

It is one week, give or take an hour or two, until my twenty first birthday. That milestone that signifies so much, and I suspect changes so little, for millions of Americans across the country.

But I don't want to dwell on the stereotyped importance. I want to dwell on the state of affairs that I have arrived at some 252 months after that day in 1987.

When we are young, I think the world seems very constant, because we have only ever seen such a very small sliver of time's passage. And I think it is customary to instill this sense of security in our children. We try to keep them warm, and full of food, and occupied with the same toys in the same room.

But at the close of two decades and one year, the vantage point seems much higher, and I can begin to appreciate the fullness, and the dynamic flow of things.

Sometimes I wonder at having gotten to this moment of time we call the present. So much has occurred, and there is even more than this yet to occur. I don't understand having made it to this point. I don't know what it means to be here, in now-ness.

And if I am vague herein, it is though no malicious desire to keep my reader ignorant, but rather through my own inability to adequately express myself.

I remember rotary phones. I remember the Apple II computer. And Floppy Disks. I remember Power Rangers, tomagachi, and the twin towers. All of these things rise up, in the crests of great waves, and all of these things come washing up, in a surfeit of metaphorical surf. And soon enough, the next wave rolls through, bringing cell phones, ipods, flash drives, britney spears and the Patriot Act. And soon, I suspect, these things will recede back out to sea as well.

In one week, I will be twenty one. I am arriving at the golden ages of which I long dreamt about as a child, and as a kid, and as a teen. And they are more complex than I thought. And they are more difficult than I thought. And I wonder at the human condition that pushes me through each day's trials and sees me to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the next day.

There is, in this reflection, not a profound sadness. Nor even any disillusionment. I am not the wearied desert traveler who finds sand in his mouth where he thought to find an oasis and salvation. What I feel is not cynicism or bitterness. I would more likely call it acceptance. It is the mood of a man who needs to be perpetually reminded of the day's agenda. My senses tell me now that this is how things are, what they've become, and I docilely accept them, for what else is there to do? There is no confusion in that what is is not what I thought it would be. I accept just as readily that then I was mistaken. And now I am not. And in the future I may yet be again, even about these things I again hold to be sure. Such is the nature of this existence.

I find it hard, at the moment, to conjure up any sort of passions. Perhaps what I lack is purpose. Maybe in some sense freedom. Purpose is important. It drives a man. It sustains him. I appeal to purpose, then, at the close of my twenty-first year on this Earth.

I shall close then, with what feels to me the most appropriate quote imaginable, by one of the greatest playwrights imaginable, from one of his best works.

Mr. Shaw, you have the floor.

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MORELL
Man can climb to the highest summits; but he cannot dwell there long.

MARCHBANKS
It's false: there can he dwell for ever and there only. It's in the other moments that he can find no rest, no sense of the silent glory of life. Where would you have me spend my moments, if not on the summits?

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