Unrehearsed Journey

"There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, 'sketch' is something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture."

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Life is an unrehearsed journey, if i may so put it that way. It's unrehearsed because you can't prepare for it in the sense that you don't know how the next chapter in your life would unfold. But your whole life you are told, perhaps with good intentions, how and what should be done to arrive at a certain end, an end that is held to be desirable. (And so, literature and arts won't do; physics and economics will.) How do i reconcile that with the notion that 'the first rehearsal for life is life itself'? That i've confused goals, and means, with life? That there are people who knew what they want, worked for it, and thus managed to live the life they pursued?

A friend of mine who was a political science major switched to philosophy in his second year. Naturally, i had to ask why. To which his reply was something like this: "Well, everyone's got to figure out what he wants somehow, i guess."

Somehow, those words struck a chord in me. And they have stuck in my mind since. (I hope i didn't change his words completely because then they would become something which came not from him but me.) My friend decided that philosophy was something he wanted to do and he made the choice. Of course there's nothing greatly significant in that small action but methinks it's admirable that he made the choice consciously, that he's 'figured out what he wants'.

I've always struggled and thought hard about what it is that i want. I believe one can only live one's life right when one lives it with passion and courage, and this entails pursuing what one truly desires. But sometimes this is not as easy as it is spelling it out here. Because what one desires is as elusive as how life is uncertain. And is it not true that that which we desire to pursue or achieve sometimes changes in the course of our unrehearsed journey? If that were so, how can i know - and when - definitely that i've 'figured out what i want'?

Perhaps i haven't thought hard enough. Or perhaps therein lies the melancholy beauty of life: One stumbles along and makes unexpected discoveries.