Keeping up with the Joneses

There's this thing that I've been thinking about doing. About dedicating myself for a chunk of time to something. And the thought of doing it makes me excited. Very excited. And yet at the same time, to do it would be to shift many things around and make some interesting sacrifices.

So yesterday, I had to spend some time at the University of Chicago library (I love university libraries, by the way...so big, and shiny, and such a great intellectual atmosphere!), and as I walked from there to work later in the afternoon, my mind started processing (again) the ramifications of this thing that I want to do but haven't officially decided to do.

As I walked around, through a campus that I've never spent any real time on before, looking at the bustle of the students, the old and ornate buildings that feel so very "university," and yet in a completely different way than the old and ornate buildings that I would wander through a Princeton University over the last three years, I started wondering what the ambitions of all these students were, and what they wanted to do with their lives, and what sort of decisions they were making for themselves. I walked, feeling a bit outclassed, as if I obviously stuck out as not a University of Chicago student, as if they were all (even at the undergraduate age) smarter than me and they could tell that I wasn't as smart just by looking at me.

And the thought hit me that I am still as insecure as I was back in high school or college, albeit insecure in different and perhaps, if it is possible, more mature ways. I didn't like the feeling of walking around this campus and feeling inadequate (even though I had no real reason to feel that way), and it reminded me that I don't like the feeling of being inadequate in any arena, be it school, work, music, relationships, and the like.

So out of this moment of self-revelation about my insecurity and the ambition borne out of it, I had a new thought about this thing that I want to do. "Is it possible," I asked myself, "that I am doing this thing just to keep up with the Joneses?" And then, "But what Joneses am I keeping up with?" See, I don't feel the pressure because of my friends, and not even from hanging around Matt's friends (who are all smart, talented, and already accomplished in remarkable ways, but in ways to which I cannot directly compare myself - in arenas that have never been a part of my talent or expertise). I concluded that the shift from PTS to LSTC must have something to do with it. The ambitions and talents of my classmates and friends at PTS were, well, what you would expect from people at PTS. That is to say, on many levels, I spent three years being outclassed, and I felt fine about it, because I could define myself apart from that, thereby giving myself an identity. At LSTC, I am part of a whole school of people who are blissfully similar to me, and I am comfortable, and there is a spirit of comaradie, and I feel like I fit in. Therein, ironically, is the problem. At PTS I was something different: I was "the Lutheran," or the "music girl" or "the girl who is forthright about sucking at Greek and Hebrew." At LSTC, I don't know what defines me over and against everyone else. Not in a pretentious or self-indulgent way, but rather, in terms of feeling like I have an identity - that I have created a particular niche for myself.

I have another year to make this decision, and I go on internship starting this fall, so I have something new and exciting, full of life experience, in my near future that may or may not influence this rogue idea that has been invading much of my thought for the past three months. Wanting to do it is all me - it's all about my interests and my ambitions. But feeling as if I have no choice but to do it, feeling like I owe it to myself to do it...that's not about me at all. That's about everyone else, and me wanting to make my mark and hold my own against these invisible Joneses with whom I haven't quite figure out how to keep up.