The sky is falling

Today the weather exhibited signs of imminent rain. We can only hope that does not turn out to be wishful thinking. The air in this neck of the Puget Sound is clogged and brown with industrial haze and car exhaust. And of course, when the weather is nice people spend more time outside, which means more time in the car, which means even more pollution, etc. It's a nasty combination for air quality.

My roommates are wandering up the steps outside. I can hear them: "No way!"; "Oh my gawd!" they chorus their disbelief at something which is probably fairly trivial. But of course it's important to have fun, even in the face of normality. I think maybe I am getting too bogged down by the hum-drum of life in the states again. There are no volcanoes spewing lava outside my window, and no flocks of scarlet macaws screeching down the beach. The dogs and their people gather across the street every evening. Maybe I want a dog. Maybe it's mango withdrawl.

I have been thinking about what I am doing. Not merely what sorts of small tasks I have been undertaking on a daily basis or even what kinds of long term goals I have but why I am doing any of it. I am sure that to some degree I owe this sort of questioning to the book I am reading (Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder), but I feel like the information I have assimilated from the book is really only providing me a more effective method for organizing and presenting my feelings. This is the sort of self-questioning that bubbles up slowly after years of sitting submerged below a frozen tar pit of everyday hum-drum and distractions.

So, why am I here? What am I trying to do? Why should I try to do it at all? I've been reading about Jean-Paul Sartre, and I think perhaps I will have to go more directly to the source before I will satisfy my curiosity about existentialism. Up until this point, the only feelings I've ever harbored toward existentialist thought have been more along the lines of scorn than curiousity. I see no value in the nihilistic, nothing-is-real-therefore-nothing-matters-in-the-slightest-and-you-can't-prove-otherwise sort of thought which I understood to be existentialism. Maybe the well is deeper than the first glance indicated. I'm sure it is, in fact. Everything tends to be more complex than it appears.

Maybe it's the imminence of graduation leading me to question my purpose. I don't like being purposeless, that's clear. And once I graduate, will I let the inertia of science propel me forward into who knows what sort of nitpicky labwork, or will I hunker down and settle upon a deep, long-term plan for making the world a better place? Gosh. What a naive thing to say. I wonder if I will be able to hold on to the windswept, battered speck of innocence still in my posession for long enough to turn it into something meaningful. Is there such a thing as ex-jaded?