Over the bridge.

I wish I felt like I had a little more control over my own life.

Nevertheless, I am resigned to this path that seems chosen for me. It makes me feel a little awkward when people congratulate me on "my" success. My career and education are like a a body slide. If I try to slide off to the left or the right, I'm going to slip back into the middle and keep sliding down. So when people congratulate me on my new job and upcoming graduation, I feel like they're congratulating me for staying in the middle of the slide. It's not like they're doing anything wrong - quite the opposite, I appreciate the sentiment - it's just awkward for me, because I don't feel like I really worked for it at all. I've fought this path and lost. I put most of my effort into things that didn't work out. You won't hear anyone congratulating me on that!

Now I am coming to a bridge, much like the one I crossed six years ago. Back then I was a naive 18-year-old, scared to leave home but more scared not to, lonely and ignorant. Now I'm 24, confident and capable, anxious but unafraid. It feels a lot different than the last bridge. The last bridge's crossing felt like an escape, and though I didn't know what was coming, I knew it had to be better than what I came from. This bridge feels like the end of a long movie...a movie that I really, really enjoyed. Although I don't want the movie to end, I know it's over. There's no more plot, nowhere else for the movie to progress...it's over. The sequel looks promising, but I really don't know much about it at all...there's no promises that it will be better than this movie, or even that it will be as good. Life in this town was the movie. Life where I'm going is the sequel. This is the bridge I'm crossing.

I don't have any choice, so I'm going for it.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to put all bridges behind.

Railroaded.

"Maybe it's time to change...And leave it all behind! I've never been one to walk alone, I've always been scared to try. So why does it feel so wrong, to reach for something more...to wanna live a better life? What am I waiting for? 'Cause nothing stays the same. Maybe it's time to change."

I feel like many of the changes and choices I've made in the past year and a half were not my own. My career has never been my primary concern in life (perhaps a fault) but yet, in the past year and a half I've completely changed my career path, and made it a reality...almost effortlessly. I applied to a competitive program late and got in...two years later, I'm going to graduate. I passed both my major exams to become a counselor, with barely any effort. I've been getting congratulated on passing them, but honestly...I barely studied. How did I succeed?

Yet, the things I've put the most effort into the last six years have been mostly unsuccessful. The things I chose for myself, the things I wanted most were always out of reach. My career was always something off in the corner...a necessary burden. But yet, I've succeeded in that effortlessly.

It feels like a path has been chosen for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up where I am. It seems like just yesterday, I planned to ask my girlfriend to marry me within months, find a job in English, and keep in touch with all my friends...two and a half years later, I don't have any plans at all, but it looks like somehow I'm going to go off alone to a distant city to be a counselor with no plans to date anyone ever again. I could have never planned this. In fact, I didn't. This wasn't the plan at all, and I have done barely anything at all to push it this way. Quite the opposite. I've fought it every step of the way, laying down my own plans...good plans. I was very methodical, very intentional in everything I did. Yet here I am.

I accept this, now. I don't like it, but I accept it. My good friends tell me I should like it. I agree, I wish I could. I wish I could want what God apparently wants to give to me. But I don't. I don't yet understand or know how to want something that I don't really want. I'm just not there.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to unrail.

Aragorn and Boromir.

It is no mystery to my friends that I am a huge fan of the character Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.

Aragorn, the strong, enigmatic leader of men, the adventurer, the destined King of Middle-earth. The one of whom Tolkien wrote that at his death, "a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after came there looked on him with wonder; for they saw the grace of his youth, and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were all blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the splendour of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world."

But alas, I am not like Aragorn, as much as I would like to be. I am a little more like Boromir.

Boromir...proud and willful, valiant but reckless, blunt and impulsive. Alike in stature to Aragorn, but of less grace and majesty. He is jealous of Aragorn and knows he is better. His best quality is that he is remorseful after he tries to take the ring from Frodo, and valiantly gives his life to protect the other hobbits.

In my own life, I fall very far short of the person I would like to be. Like Boromir, I want to be Aragorn but I am still only Boromir, struggling with the smaller things in life.

I think it's important to have appropriate standards in life. Boromir will never be Aragorn and neither will I. I may never get all the things I want from life, even the really good things, just as Boromir will never be king. The best I can do is make up for my mistakes and move on.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to be a better Boromir.