Well, Christina, your entry was just thought-provoking enough to drag me off my routine and type an entry of my own.

First of all, I would like to comment that in 2 days time, 5 people have put an amount of thought into the Fear of Failure. That's Erika, Alan, Christina, Shannon, and I. This is either coincidencial or ESP, and I can honestly say I do not know which.

In my case, if I fail at an idea I've been mulling over for the past month, my life will be fucked. Maybe not completely fucked, but much more fucked than I am comfortable with. Unlike Erika, I do not fear failure itself. I fear the damage that failure will do to my life. It's like Who Wants to be a Millionaire. You're at the million dollar question and you're not quite sure of the answer. What do you do? Is it worth is to risk five-hundred thousand dollars on a 50/50 question?

That was yesterday. Today I'm mulling over a different question.

All I know is that for the past 3-4 days, I've felt like a chunk of my body is missing. I feel like there is a purpose to living and I'm not getting it! Christina, Shannon, you know exactly what I mean! Alan would say the purpose is to be happy. Chris would say that the purpose is to do what you instincly feel you ought. I agree with them both 100%, the only problem is that I don't instinctfully know what I ought to do. Chris decided that he needed to join the Jesuits. That's great for him, but what about the rest of us who know there's something missing, but don't know what it is??!

That was today, and this is now: I know what I ought; I ought to travel to foreign places and research humanity. I ought to see people, how they live, what they do, what they think, and I ought to talk with them and be fascinated.

The problem, I think, with living in America, is that here I become totally occupied with myself. Here it is a competition to acheive "Ultra"-ness. You want to write a Great novel. You want to be a Great doctor. You want to be a Great artist. You want to be a Great martial-artise; a Great actress. You want to be James Bond. You want to be Humphry Bogart. Hali Berry. You want a beautiful skyline apartment that is Great and Perfect in every way. You want to be a Hiker. You want to climb Mount Everest. Tt is all about You, because, after all, You are Yourself.

But I am not what I ought to do. I could be any of those things, and in the end I would still die. I could be an engineering expert, speak 7 different languages, know everything that was going on in the world politically, and be just really smart and start a cult of my own that I was the leader of and it would spread far and wide and I would have all these followers, but in the end I would still just die. The world would be left with this following that I created, but I would be gone then and all I will have done is worked.

I guess I would rather spend my time working towards kowledge of the world which I am a part of rather than working towards becoming something. I don't want to work with the goal in mind of acheiving some one thing. I rather want to work from curiosity.

I don't want to work FOR somthing, I want to work FROM something.

In other words I don't want to work. I want to do things that I WANT to because they are enriching. I want to absorb all sorts of wonderful fairy lands and see marriage ceramonies and discuss with the fairies what they think about the purpose of life! And see cross-culture similarities, and say OH MY GOD, and just see all sorts of different people, people who are willing to talk to you and give you their time. I do NOT want to stay here with these people and continue beating this dead cow that is Minnesota.

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