| Has anyone ever read the book The Magician's Nephew? It's the beginning of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, although I'm not entirely sure if it's the official first book or if it was published in a weird order or how that goes. I know there's a discrepancy between the order in which those books were published and the order in which one is supposed to read them, but I'm not entirely sure how this Star Wars-esque conundrum is solved. It's on a website somewhere. Anyway, in the book the main characters are two kids named Diggory and Polly. Through some peculiar events, they acquire magic rings that take them to another world that is sleepy and timeless, that is host to a dreamy wood that is dotted with hundreds of shallow-looking magical pools of water that actually lead to a host of other worlds, or dimensions, if you will. They end up calling this crossroads of dimensions "the wood between the worlds." Nothing ever happens here, they discover. And each pool is faceless and unidentifiable - one could easily get lost here. It is also impossible to tell where each pool will lead. Being in this wood for too long makes one sleepy and complacent, willing to just sit and merely be, without any worry as to how one will survive. Where I am in life - I am in my own wood between the worlds. There are many paths I could take, and I am completely flummoxed as to which one to choose. I am having a hard time deciding which is worse - the fact that none of the pools give me any clue as to what lies in their murky depths, or that I am becoming more and more complacent right where I am. The magic of this in-between place threatens to tighten its grasp on me until I am apathetic to a dangerous degree. Grad school? Work? DHS? The Holloway Group? Should I move to another state? There's an idea that is looking more and more appealing, honestly. But then..I could just continue working where I am after graduation, or get a job with a state that will pay for grad school. Or I could just graduate and work where I am indefinitely, stay in the wood, and see if anything happens (although I know, in the deepest recesses of my overactive intuition, that nothing will). Anyone else find themselves in such an interesting situation? I'm sure it's extremely common for those of my cohort. You're not alone, my friends, and hopefully, neither am I. |
