Finding Your Own Ticket

I was reading F. Scott's Fitzgerald's, The Great Gatsby, on the third floor of Thomas Library—the window to my right exemplifying the sun beating down on the trees as they begin to change color. Two girls sitting on the long, red chairs as a group of boys push past them in a rush to the dining hall.


I hear a sigh out of my left ear that slightly awoke me from the trance of the view around me. It’s my friend, who we shall name Mr. X.


“Man,” Mr. X says, “shit is really starting to hit the fan.” He had four thick, from what I could tell, medical books in from of him on the table; his forehead a little sweaty from the walk here I suppose.


“Huh?” I said, obviously caught off guard. You see, my mind has been on other things lately, I just don’t know what.


“This nursing program is too much,” he says as he hands me over a compiled list of required readings for his classes.


“I’m not just reading Gatsby, man” Mr. X says, “this stuff isn’t enjoyable. I’m memorizing this all and then having to puke it all back on paper.”


I stared blankly with no answer. The idea of retaining so much information, and then just puking it up—basically cleansing your system of it—didn’t seem to make sense on why he actually was in the nursing program to begin with.


“I’m starting to think I should change my major.”
“To what?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Just take some classes and fall in love with something; it’s okay to be unsure in my opinion.”
“I can’t just be unsure, Logan. I’m not here to waste my time.”


And here I am, reading Gatsby, pondering whether or not I’d fall in love with Daisy if I were Gatsby, or if he’s really just that crazed. The question arose in my head: What am I doing with my life, if my friend feels like this about his? Exactly what I want to be doing.


Mr. X, at some point, saw I had no response—suspended in my own daydream—and walked away. It wasn’t until now that all of this is hitting me. Why can’t Mr. X feel like he can’t waste time? Why can’t he just let life guide him the way he wishes? Maybe he’s caught up in the life—the life of money, lavish, and materials—and believes what he is doing will get him there.


It donned on me at that moment how lucky I was to not have been that person. As much as I love Mr. X, a true dear friend, I was relieved not to have that feeling of having to jump on the train of life before it left you. How I do not worry about wasting time over books and questions of life that may not have any answers—it’s the conversations my heart yearns for—and it’s what I fell in love doing. Mr. X’s ideas are not dumb ones, but there is nothing wrong with letting different versions of life pass you by. That is why we have choices and, supposedly, free will.


The demands of society have pushed us not to want to sit around and adventure through the world, and our minds, until we land on something we love. Society wants things now and they want that all the time.


I will not give into those demands. I will float through this gigantic world until my two feet land on something that I wish to stop at.  


So, no, society, I will not hop on your train and let you take me wherever. I will wait for another ride.