Idealized future state

Much of my life has been built around a the search for meaning through the pursuit of an idealized future. If I can just get a little closer to that ideal, life will saturate with meaning and significance. This is yet another youthful defense against the burden of emotions and vulnerability. The right college will bring meaning, the right graduate school experience, the right career, becoming who my wife needs in order to fulfill all of her needs. It's been a constant effort to mold myself to what is deemed significant and meaningful. The answers will find me if I can just get to where they can find me. 

This blog is one giant trail of my relentless pursuit of that one elusive thing. The whole premise of the URL, a set of New Year's Resolutions is nothing but a program to obtain some vision of an idealized future. All the bad stuff that I'm feeling now will sublimate to nothingness as I get closer and closer to a smaller waist, check another Dickens book off of my to be read list, or get accepted to law school. My pursuit of other career opportunities. My obsession with The Edge. All this groping for some sense of what I'm about, what I should be doing, what I can do to finally feel accepted and fulfilled. 

It's a futile effort. I've made progress towards the career goals that I thought would bring deeper meaning and purpose to my life. Work will never be the principle source of meaning in my life. The gap between what I wanted from work and what it actually provides has been nothing but an inexhaustible source of frustration and disappointment. The truth is that I have it awfully good where I am now. It's comfortable, but that's not a bad thing. There is no mystical office out there that will vanquish all of my doubts and provide a clear route to a deep and meaningful career. It's a job. It doesn't have to be devoid of significance, but every day at work doesn't need to be a spiritual quest either.

No book will provide the answers for how to live my life or where I can find meaning and fulfillment in every moment of my life. Books can expand my life, make it richer and more complex, but the key to that something else that I've always sought will never reveal itself, no matter how difficult the book is to read. There is no something else. It's all right here. Everything I need is already in my life, but I've been to busy filling my emotional needs and keeping the potential of any bad feelings away by distracting myself with silly little stunts that offer the illusion of getting that much closer to the idealized future. 

I don't need to become somebody else for my wife to love me more or to fulfill her emotional needs. I just need to be me. That's all that she's ever wanted from me. She wants to feel valuable and important, that she matters, that she's desired and wanted and pursued. I feel all of those things for her. It's just a matter of sharing that with her, being in the moment with her, hearing everything she says, not just with her voice, but with her body, her gestures, her actions. The answers aren't out there waiting for me to find them. They're inside each of us, trying to find their way out, but we have to work together to coax them out. I'm getting better, we're getting better. It's not about the ideal. It's about us.