[JD@af]

Yeah man, I'm on the same page. I often wonder how it is that some people I talk to look at me like I have 6 heads when I try to introduce my thoughts on this subject matter. Do some fail to attempt to analyze their lives and the world we live in? Do they not wonder about who they are and why? And I don't know if I should feel pity or envy for their disposition.

I too have been a little lost since I graduated college. The girl I thought I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with informed me in my last week of college that she had other plans. I think this is when it all started. I kissed her good-bye, and let her walk right out of my life. While now I no longer think she was the one for me, I am on a journey to find where I am supposed to be, and what I am supposed to be doing. For the first time in my life, I did not have a path set out before me. It wasn't you go to high school, and then college... etc. I had a world of freedom at my fingertips, and that's pretty overwhelming considering the options that lay before me. My path may be different than that of many others, but the goal is the same. I want to know, like you said, what my true north is.

I have questioned life, and purpose, and why I am here. This outlook has made me selfish, and I refuse to let much of anyone get close to me, just because I can't stand to think about them or their problems when I am so overwhelmed with my own. It's like you said about finding meaning, about trying to "find something greater than that in which we can attach our reasoning to." Every so often, I am struck by something meaningful, that says something to me, that others often fail to recognize. Many read the book Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, and like me found it to be an important and life-shaping work. Believe it or not, seeing the movie Fight Club was also like this for me. Somehow it made sense to me.

I think my big problem is that I look at society, and the world that I live in, and I can not help but wonder why am I supposed to live this way? What makes this correct, and the ways of others somehow estranged by the narrow-minded people one encounters in most walks of our society. I wonder if we have any business getting married, and working jobs from 9 to 5. Somehow there must be more to life than this. These courses of action strike me as ideal for complacent sheep, eager to eak their ways through life, and wake up dead one day, not for the species we have evolved into (sorry, no creationist here).

We started out as nomads, driven by the instinct of survival like all other animals. Look at us. We have removed that survivalist instinct from our lives for the most part. I feel that this may be the route of many of our problems, and why some people who wonder too much are left scratching their heads at the paradigm of convention living. I am finding meaning in pleasure and adrenaline, because at least these are aspects of live that make me feel alive (by the way, tex, where does your love of cars tie into all this? - mine is derived from the rush of going fast, which is better than almost anything else {sex included} to me), now that I don't have mom and dad looking over my shoulder telling me what's right from wrong. I believe that life should be lived by experiencing as much as possible, and that one day, if I can stop seeking and waiting for enlightenment, I will find it. I hope this is coming out all right - I don't think this is exactly what I want to say, it's just intangible and I can't put the feeling into words that serve its true meaning justly.

Is it Hindu tradition that defines Nirvana as the ultimate be-all end-all expression of life? I whole-heartedly agree. But I believe only through a vast array of experiences can this knowledge be acquired. I hope someday it will all make sense.