life is a highway

The other day, a new acquaintance asked me, "So, what's your dream?" A younger, more ambitious, more naive me would've answered with a confidence and assuredness that only youth can convey. By no means do I consider myself an aged and discerning sage of the whirling dervish of life. However, I do feel I've lived many lives, not in such a dramatic fashion as some, but many lives nonetheless.

I answered that question with as much surprise and disappointment as I'm sure the listener was ought to hear. "Don't really have one..." The moment those words were released into the world, my heart fell with a heavy thud and I longed for the few years ago when I had felt so invincible and all.knowing.

So I took some time to reflect on my own words, my own thoughts, my own genuine and honest desires. I looked through my scanty collection of philosophy books searching for a brief dialogue to sum up my psychological state of being. I was able to find it in Krishnamurti's On Love and Loneliness, "It is possible to think rightly, to live freely and intelligently, only when there is ever deeper and wider self-knowledge." This wraps up my egotistical life to a point. My longing for a break from repression and obligation. My propensity for from bureaucracy and monotony. My hankering for adventure... and the open road. A freedom where there are no ties, no burdens, no fences.

As my mind wildly imagined the grand possibilites of such a life, "the tugging" was there. The ever present nugget of knowledge to recall of duty and calling, of commitment and commission. "The tugging" always comes with John Donne's immortal reminder that "No man is an island." So I'm jolted back into the most realistic of realities. I cannot venture forth alone. Tis not allowed.

Then what to do for my intermittent feelings of restlessness and the unquenchable thirst for the infinite open road? I believe I've found the answer. Do as Tom Cochroan does so joyfully (if not a bit awkwardly) atop sandy boulders with a guitar strapped to his body. Sing aloud, declaring, "Life is a highway, I wanna ride it all night long." I surely do... and looking for someone "going my way."