Some Questions

At the end of my freshman writing seminar, my professor asked me to write about what drove me to write. I thought this was a waste of time. What do I care what drives me, so long as I feel driven?

What I ended up saying was that I write because of the size of the world. (It’s very big.) This answer felt true at the time, and today it seems like an appropriate answer for a freshman in college.

Now Kirsten keeps asking me, “What are your questions?”, which I guess I haven’t thought about since I was nineteen. And although my first reaction was the same as it was back then–this is a waste of time!–it turns out I care a little bit more now. I don’t feel as naturally driven as I did at nineteen.

For today, at least, these are my questions:

Am I a sailor or a pilot? Who am I supposed to be? How do we make the best of this? Is the world worse than ever now, or better? How do people fit together?