On Waste

I love staying inside on a perfectly beautiful day. Drawing the shades. Grabbing a book. Not moving.

I love travel delays. A stalled train. A missed flight. Being stuck.

Most of the time, life feels excruciatingly assigned… directed, purposed, pointed. Every minute spoken for. Every task optimized for efficiency or effectiveness.

There’s really nothing more rebellious than waste.

When I was 14, I wanted to live in Africa.

My parents are both dreamers, visionaries, achievers and I was told, over and again: 

You have purpose.

You have a destiny.

You can change the world.

This was so powerful and, I think, very good and empowering.

But I felt almost a desperate recklessness to waste it. My life, that is.

I wanted to take my intellect and talents and go to the darkest continent and live in the simplest way.

A few years later, I actually did it.

I stepped off a plane in Nairobi, faced gusting waves of dry heat, and went and sat in a hut.

I walked with people I couldn’t communicate with. I got in jeeps and jolted over riverbeds, spent hours sitting on giant rocks when our tires inevitably blew. I napped through a safari in arguably the greatest game preserve in the world.

Waste.

I don’t like exploring this dimension of myself because it feels stupid.

I’m so privileged and so fortunate. Don’t I owe the universe? Mustn't I contribute? It’s the price I pay, right? For having it so good?

I get so tired of everything having to have a goal… of everything having to mean something… of the relentless deciphering of competing messages and ideologies and objectives.

The fairly thick and constructed outer layer of me is a driven, ambitious, goal-oriented person I’m meant to be.

But deeper down I want to sit with my eyes closed in front of a Monet. I want to watch TV under the northern lights. I want to sleep through the sunrise and eat the same meal everyday. 

I want to be unimportant and quiet and ignored.

What is this?

I have no idea.