The urge to go on a journey

When we are children we all believe we are the main character in the story of the world. Part of adulthood is accepting that while we may be the main character in our own stories, as far as the rest of the world is concerned we are at best extras in a cast of billions. Unless, perhaps, someone loves us.

I am an extra in your cast. But I beg you to honor me by allowing me the conceit that I am the main character for just a few paragraphs. I will even help you by explaining what kind of main character I am, so that you know whether to fall in love with me -- and allow me, within the spare walls of this blog, to share your inimitable spotlight.

To begin with, I am an antihero. Not the Han Solo kind, the selfish rogue with a heart of gold. Not the Arthur Dent kind, the hapless oaf caught up in a world he could never have controlled. No, I am the Holden Caulfield kind of antihero. I was born to an upper-middle-class family with blessings and advantages that few in the world can dream of. I graduated valedictorian from my high school, double-800s on my SATs, and went off to one of the best colleges in America. I took home my double major after three and a half years of study. And then the whining began.

You see, I am one of those people who have never quite accepted that they are not the star of the show. That what we want, we must earn. Most of the things I've ever wanted have fallen into my lap, either through the beneficence of others or through natural talents that have no need of discipline. When it came time to work to earn my living, I couldn't do it. Working three to eight, I earned more per hour than most people earn in a day, sitting in a chair helping high schoolers learn math, and called it arduous. My kind friends, in dire financial straits like recent college graduates should be, reassured me that pain is deeply personal and that my dissatisfaction with one of the world's best jobs said nothing about my ingratitude. But even they didn't know what to say when I complained that I hated my life so much, and had so little hope for the future, that I was considering suicide. What do you say when "the heir of all the ages, blessed with the material splendors of the Promised Land" -- as a critic once wrote of Holden Caulfield -- tells you he'd rather be dead?

I am coming to the point now, so please bear with me just a little longer. On some level in my ungrateful little self-tortured mind, I am convinced that if I had a girlfriend this would all be better. A girlfriend would give me a reason to look forward to the future, to feel like I was worth more than the trifle I produce. Love, that is, is all I need. But my luck with the ladies hasn't been so hot lately, perhaps because desperation and fantasies of self-slaughter don't exude the right pheromones.

So the other day I saw birds flying through the sky, and just like they say, I got the urge to go on a journey. A quest, if you will. Not for love, exactly -- I'm not ready for love. I'm looking for wisdom. I'm going to drive across America. Stop in cities, towns, hamlets, roadside inns. And everywhere I go I'm going to ask the people who live there to tell me a love story. A story about -- How did you fall in love? Was it love at first sight? Did you grow to love a friend you'd known for years? Did you have an unrequited crush? Were you stalked? When was the moment you realized your love loved you back? When did you realize the glow was gone? When did love give way to sex -- or sex to love? And above all, what lessons did you take from your story?

These are the questions I'll ask. I expect I'll get a lot of different kinds of answers. Maybe so many that it takes more wisdom than I have to assemble the wisdom I receive, like trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle without the cover. But whatever gold I snatch from the riverbed of human experience I will pass to you. I hope you will find it useful as a prop in your own drama, now playing on the sound stage across the way, in the studio we built apart but maintain together.