if today was your last day

Today was my last day of Summer 2009. How depressing. I am now going my separate way, and the others will soon follow suit. It has been a nice summer, and a pleasant one. I have enjoyed myself immensely and hope everyone else has as well. I do dread finally going my own way though, wondering constantly if I will succeed or fail completely and utterly in the coming year. I have no doubts that my friends will succeed in anything that they wish to do...they always have and presumably always will. They will rise to the task. We only get one pass at life, win or lose, pass or fail, there is only one shot. However, I have always learned much more in my failures than my successes. There is always room for improvement when I fail, when I succeed I become complacent...something that I should despise but all too often succumb to. I am a driven person, but it seems that I all too often get stopped on the rest areas of life and do not want to get back on the highway, as some have described it. I have become more disillusioned over my lifetime...something that I would like to reverse but secretly know that they must stand. I do not champion cynicism or pessimism but I believe that there is something in those ways of life and thinking. Yet unbridled optimism and idealism can be just as successful and a much happier journey. I do not want to let my friends go for now. I know that they need room to grow and live their lives with or without me I am going to have a hard time letting go. I know that I will see them a good bit still but it really won't be the same nor should it. We will come back together with new stories to tell and different outlooks on life, which should only breathe new life into these already perfect friendships and allow them to change and grow. I also do not want to become mired in the past or race to the future. The present is all we really have...and all we really ever had. The past is important that "dark unfathomed retrospect" but if it rules our lives than we cannot possibly live. The future is a fun thing to think about but it is also a funny thing...always changing and showing us how silly our aspirations can be. I look forward to this new chapter in my life, but the characters from the previous chapter (I am not dehumanizing them, I am simply using a book theme) will hopefully play a vital role in my story and I in theirs. Well I am done thinking for now so I will just stop while I can.

river flows in you.

As I sit here, listening to river flows in you by yiruma, I believe that it is a good time to examine my life. I have examined it much since I turned twenty yesterday, and to be honest I am no closer to finding out who I am or what I truly want to be. The masks that I wear to the outside world hide the inner me, however, the masks are a powerful thing...and I seem to have lost myself under their weight. I value honesty in others and continually search for truth, but I have never taken the time to "know thyself" as the ancient Greeks spoke, and is to me a challenge to every individual as much as something to ponder. I can envision it being spoken during their times, and the echoes travel to our ears today. I know it seems silly, but to me this phrase is fundamentally changing how I view myself and the people around me. As I peel off the masks, I cannot help to feel uncomfortable if only because there is security in hiding oneself within the hollow masks we so often wear. What I will find underneath is of no difference to me, whoever that is, because when I find myself only then can I change the aspects of me, my true self, that I dislike, and keep those that I see fit to be kept. Also on my mind is the transition that is fast approaching. My last friends in high school are approaching graduation at breakneck speed, and a reordering of my life will soon follow. As we all go our separate ways, what will happen to all of us I wonder many times. I know that true friendships can endure the death that time often brings, but there is always a hint of uncertainty in any situtation that we may find ourselves in...and this is no exception. I have no doubt we all will be stronger from the experiences that lie ahead, but the changes that are inevitable are intriguing at best, and frightful at worst. One thing is for certain is that nothing can stop the changes from occuring so it is best to step aside and let them occur. To fight them would be an unnecessary task, and could be counterproductive to one's growth. I'll close with quotes that I am currently considering:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
-Henry David Thoreau

Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.
-William Butler Yeats
(This quote especially intrigues me because finding out who you truly are can be as challenging as going out to battle. I mean no disrespect to those who have died in battle, but this quote was too thought provoking for me to leave out.)

No one remains quite what he was when he recognizes himself.
-Thomas Mann

20...what an odd number.

I turned twenty today. Twenty years old. If I am lucky then around 25% of my life is now over, and for what? Have I really accomplished anything of value? What awaits during my next twenty years? All of these questions are on my mind as I sit here writing this. I wish that I had some deep message within this post, as I would have liked to accumulate some wisdom within the last twenty years, yet I am left with nothing. Mere emptiness is all I find as I search for something over the last two decades of my life. However, as I think more and more there is no meaning to life besides what we give to it. I have existed and lived off and on during my life, but now I am choosing to live full time from now on. The meaning in my life with be what I determine it to be, not what the world or anyone in it should try to impose on it, positive or otherwise. My "mind forg'd manacles" that I have so long been enslaved to I am now choosing to cast off to allow myself to live life to its fullest. I am choosing my newfound freedom over the opression I have so long let myself live under.
Now some quotes that I am considering today:

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
and things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art; to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
-Henry Longfellow

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.
-Walt Whitman

Oh while I live, to be the ruler of life, not a slave, to meet life as a powerful conqueror, and nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.
-Walt Whitman

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?
-Walt Whitman