This Is a Test

All people deal in metaphors.  It is a unique capacity of human brains to make connections between disparate things.  We use them to make sense of the world, the people in it, and ourselves.  Writers are particularly good at this.  I know I spend a lot of my time considering the connections of the world, and my current position in life makes life itself one of the objects I try to compare to other things.  Life is a pain in my heel which comes and goes.  My hair doesn’t listen to me, wanders in every direction, and takes lots of work without much return, but sometimes it just falls neatly into place—like life.  And life is a test.  That last one has been on my mind all week.  It makes me think of myself sitting at a desk, pencil tapping, my feet swinging—and yes, my feet did swing occasionally into high school and even college.  They still do, and I’m still laboring over the test.

When you’re a kid, that test is true-false.  You’re given a question that is the answer, and you just have to say whether it’s right or not.  Join the soccer team?  Yes.  Go out for the musical?  No.  Camp again this summer, or take a trip instead?  The choices you make are simple, with low-risk, and often you’re told what the answer is or what is should be.

As you grow older, getting into college and beyond, those questions become multiple choice.  Do you major in A) chemistry, B) theatre, or C) education?  Will you go to A) Chicago, B) New York, C) Tokyo, or D) back home to live with your parents?  Should I A) stay at my minimum-wage job where I’m relatively happy, B) look for a better-paying, perhaps higher-stress job, or C) start trying to freelance in what I really want to do (throwing myself out there with no net—how’s that for a metaphor)?  At this point, you know the choices, and maybe all of them are right in some way.  But as every obnoxious test directs us to do, you have to choose the one that is most right.  Good luck on figuring that one out.

So what happens later in life?  When the earth stops shifting under your feet—if it ever does—and your choices are no longer life-changing?  Well, I can only guess, as I haven’t been there yet, but I like to think that at that point, life becomes an essay question.  Most of my peers hated essay questions, growing up.  They were the ones that required the most work, the greatest knowledge.  But I always liked them.  They gave me a chance to fully explain my position, the best chance for me to say what I thought and why I thought that was right.   At that point, if you explain your position well and use a strong argument, you can get points even for an answer that isn’t the best. 

That is what I want for the life I’m going to build.  Even if it isn’t everything I hope it will be, even if I struggle and have to give an answer I may not have expected, I hope that I will always have the eloquence and the wisdom to pass the test.