I have a perpetual desire to be more independent somehow.

We’ve been reading a book—Bruce Feiler’s “Learning to Bow”—and it strikes me how much our culture (or should that be cultures? Which one is mine right now?) worships independence. I suppose I had thought it was a universal truth, this longing to somehow break the mold, live alone without being alone, seize the day and defy expectations. In Japan, independence gives way to the “kumi,” the group. Everything is about preserving the community, the family, the class, the school, the country. It’s about contributing and giving and getting the most out of the group. I used to hate group work when I was in school. Perhaps I was a brat. I hated the fact that my grade depended upon everyone else’s ability to perform. Their lack of concentration, of concern, of precision maddened me. I became pushy and held up my head in defiance, taking over the task and doing the job myself. It never presented itself as a huge problem—the girls in my class were often happy not to have to work—but it has come back to haunt me over and over again. I find working with people frustrating. I constantly have my own idea of how best to do it. I take over; I dominate. I’m usually the one in charge, leading the way, driving the car, reading the maps. It just comes naturally to me, and yet sometimes it makes me question myself—my own nature. Am I too pushy? Am I domineering? I like to think that I would hand over the reigns if someone reached out and took them from me. But would anyone ever step up and take them from my hands? It’s a constant dilemma, because on the other side of it I am desperate for someone to take the reigns. I hate to make decisions. Independently, I can make decisions easily, but put me with friends and I hate to decide what to do, where to eat, what to watch. I long for someone to take control of the day and just let me follow along for once. But would I butt in? Try to have my own way? I long for someone to take over my life at the moment because I’m not sure where it’s going. In fact, I have no idea.

In less than two weeks I will be flying back home to England. Is that where home is? I’m not sure anymore. It’s where my family is, my cats, my car, my familiarities, my childhood. And yet I will leave my home behind, or at least what has become my home over the last four years. I never expected--when I got on that plane with my parents to fly over here five years ago, eighteen and excited, jubilant, anxious—that I would grow up so much in the next four years. I was already grown up: fiercely independent, well travelled, well educated, confident. But I needed to let go of the me I was when I was 15, the me that was still hanging on as I took my A-Levels and left college, the me that was still there as I boarded that plane. I am a different person now, and yet the past four years seem somewhat of a blur. A happy blur of friendship and happiness and faith and cultures and learning and growing. I have turned into a new person: one who trusts in a power much greater than myself, who is willing to hand everything over to an unseen but ever-present God. I have a degree now, I have confidence in my abilities, I have a friendship like no other. I have learned to live in my own home, sort out my own life, take care of myself. I have broken away from the ties that bound me to a youth I loved and struggled through.

Perhaps that’s part of the reason why letting this place go and returning home is so scary right now. I feel like I am erasing the last few years, returning back to live with my parents, still dependent on them for money and for shelter. I have no job. Half of me still wants to be in school. I have no idea where I will be at the end of this year, and I am so scared that I will still be living at Greenways, sleeping in my old bed, brushing my hair in a mirror that I have to bend down to in order to see my full reflection. I need to know that my life is going somewhere.

Ironically, I know my life will go somewhere. I know it’s not going to stop still. I know I could get a job. The problem is I am still grasping at dreams. In my dream I write my novel, travel the world, edit a magazine. I’m respected and well-known, well paid, happy. I’m independent—I don’t rely on anyone for anything. I travel constantly, but when I want to. I visit Paris frequently, blending in with the manicured Parisian women sipping espressos in Left Bank cafes. I travel with a notebook and pen and scribble my next chapter in my Paris apartment or a hotel room in New York before a meeting with the editor the following day. I feel successful. I come home and press play on the jazz CD, drink coffee as the music starts, dance giddily around the room, looking gorgeous in my sophisticated dress suit. I wind the silk scarf from around my neck as I sway to the music, a magazine in one hand, reading the latest review of my book. I shake my perfect hair from its clasp and sit down on my leather sofa to glance out at the panoramic view from my windows.

By the time you start hunting for a job, you’re meant to have realized that the dreams you used to have about your perfect life when you were little are unrealistic and not really what you’re after anyway. Except that I’m still after them. Is that true for everyone? Do we all just have to learn to live with the disappointment of reality? Something in me bucks at that pessimistic summation of life. I don’t want to settle for less, and perhaps that’s why I can’t seem to find anything that even vaguely fits the bill as I scroll through page after page of job advertisements online. There is nothing that says “successful editor” or “best-selling travel writer.” You have to start from the bottom and work your way up. But I don’t want to keep files and accounts and make coffee. I don’t want to have to climb up a ladder. I don’t want a nine-to-five job in a high-rise building with only the thought of the weekend to keep me going.

They say you have to begin at the bottom and work your way up. Perhaps I can work my way up to the dream, I think. But then, what is the dream, exactly? Money, a gorgeous apartment, success, fame? They are all such ephemeral things, the types of things you are not meant to lust after. Worldly things. I look at people around me sometimes and think to myself that I am lucky. At least I have confidence that I am going somewhere. But aren’t I just kidding myself? How am I going to go somewhere if I don’t know where I’m going?

My little brother is taking his A-Levels this year. He will head off to flight school afterwards to earn his wings. He will live his dream as a commercial pilot, travel the world, make piles of money, live the life he wants to live. I hate that I have a tinge of jealousy when I think about that. But there is such a large part of me that screams out: “But I was the successful one! I was the one with all A’s! I was the one who got the awards! I was the one with the great reports! I was the success!” But success isn’t measured by grades anymore. School is over. All my 4.0 GPA means is that I was good at that part of my life. I made a good student. That’s over now.

Life is meant to be about following your heart. I followed mine. I rejected the business and scientific worlds of my father and followed my heart to what I loved to do best. My degree is in English. The minor in French was not because I thought it might help me land a job; it’s because I enjoyed it. I want to speak French for me, not for anything else. I heard a girl standing outside one of the buildings at the university yesterday talking on her cell phone. She was telling a friend or her mother about some research she had just done. Apparently, she said, when she graduated she’d start out making $60,000. “Isn’t that, like, sweet?” she squealed into the phone, jumping up and down on her high-heels, her little shiny purse flapping. I sighed. Why didn’t I just take a subject I that would get me somewhere in life? I could have become a lawyer. I might not have enjoyed it, but I would have been able to do it, and I would have been good at it, or so I like to tell myself. The temptation is still there to just apply to law school and see if I could make it. But that’s not the life I really want… The dilemma is that I wish I wanted it. Every time I speak to anyone I know they ask me what I’m going to do next. I pause and try to sound as though I’m sure of my life even though I’m not. They ask what my major was. English. Oh, they say. Do you want to teach?

Because teaching is all that an English degree is good for, apparently. English is one of those subjects that you would never take to get somewhere in life. It’s something you learn to teach so that others can learn it and teach it to others. A vicious circle of pointlessness that makes the whole profession appear bloated and inconsequential. But I love it. I love the research, the writing, the ideas, the theories, the symbolism. It encapsulates something about life. It’s an analogy for the way you suddenly find things in the world around you that are so unexpected but yet always there, hiding there. It symbolizes the way life surprises you—the way you can find anything you want to between the lines. Perhaps there is hope after all between the lines of my life. Perhaps I’m just not looking hard enough.

Follow your dreams, because if you don’t, you’ll always regret it. When I was in school I decided that I didn’t want a life without regrets. Lori would tell me that that is unrealistic, and she’s right. There are always little regrets that creep in—I should have bought ice cream at the store; if only I’d remembered to take the chicken out of the freezer; if only I hadn’t driven that night… From the minute to the life-changing, regrets are a part of life. But I want to avoid them at all costs. So why, then, don’t I just follow my dream? If I want to be a writer so bad, why don’t I just write the book that’s been sitting in the folds of my consciousness, like a bud I am refusing to water. I tell myself I don’t have the time; I don’t have the discipline. But I think it’s because I don’t really have the confidence. I’m afraid. I’m afraid that it will be terrible—that the whole dream will come crashing down around my ears. Because it’s all that really keeps me going—the hope that one day it will happen. But I might be terrible. I know I can write copy for Kolin’s business writing book and I can write a 113-page thesis on the feminism in Jane Austen’s writing, but can I write about life, love, experience, culture, the world in general? Do I know enough? Can I make it fit together? Can I develop a plot? Writing is playing God: you become a creator of humans—characters that live and breathe and speak and think. Do I have the power to do that? Creation is not something to take lightly.

And yet if I don’t try I will never know, and that will be my greatest regret. So while I search for that perfect job—the editorial assistant with the travel magazine that isn’t based in New York or the staff writer for Boston magazine, why don’t I just have a shot? If it doesn’t work I can tell myself it was my first try—no big deal, you can get better. But, to be honest, I don’t know how I’d cope with failure. I’ve never really experienced much of it… I know that sounds odd. But it’s true.

We all envy. It’s a sin, I know, but I think it’s a natural part of all of us, and we have to learn to get over it. I’m not doing too well with that, though. I think it’s a lesson we need to learn, too. We need to realize that other people—those perfect people we wish we could be—aren’t really all that perfect. Their lives aren’t all that great. They may have success and fame and money, but they don’t have friendship and family and joy and love. They don’t have a mother and a father like mine, a friend like mine. They might appear happy, but they have their own envies; they have their own regrets.

I lived the happiest years of my life so far right here. But my life is still at the beginning. I’m 22. It seems so old to me, but I know it really isn’t. I know there’s still so much to do, so much more happiness to have. I know that right now is one of the scariest times of my life, but I know there is happiness to come. I know that later this year I will have a clearer picture, a better idea of where my life is. I know that this is not really the end… it’s the beginning. My dad would tell me not to be silly, not to be scared—“Life is full of possibility,” he would say. “Seize the day. You can be anything you want to be.” I could use some of my father’s wisdom right now. Sometimes I think he can’t see the storms for the silver linings, but a lot of what he says is rooted in many years of experience. His life is successful. I am so proud of him. I only hope that I can make the same sort of success out of mine. I want to make him proud. I want to live up to expectations—not his, but mine. I want to succeed.