Rhinocrisy

This song perfectly captures my current mood. In the unlikely case that you’ve never heard it before, I beseech you: if you start, you must keep listening till the halfway point.

I went to drop off my dissertation with the registrar today, the last possible minute finally having arrived. It’s strange hearing the congratulations of strangers. I think to myself that they are praising me out of ignorance, because if they knew what little I have actually done, they would know I didn’t deserve it. This is the same doubt that has haunted me my whole life. My path has simply been navigating a maze that someone else built - there was a solution and a goal at the end that was already set out for me. It only required that I walk to the end. The truly intrepid, the brave and praiseworthy, cut their way through the maze and blaze their own trail, exploring the wide, wild country outside its walls. Now, what do I know about setting my own goals? The ones I imagine are far away, in the most untamed corner of the wilderness. And here I am, unknowing, feeling my lack. Can I navigate that wilderness, or will I be lost in the thicket, trapped by endless rows of snarls and thorns?

Sometimes I lose patience with people assuming what my next course will be - employment, marriage, stability. Should I continue to play my life out by rote? Can others truly bear to live their entire lives that way? Is it possible to never leave the boundaries of the maze, and to follow its familiar, monotonous walls back and forth in perpetuity? Other times I fear their assumption is correct. Only a fool ventures off into the unknown in pursuit of fabled treasures - the sort of romantic idiot who likens life to a fantastic voyage.

This is not how I imagined adulthood - learning to accept that you are a bug, and dreams are false, and heroes do not exist (or at least: you will never be one).

I am riding my bike from the bookbindery, to deliver my two copies of the document, and these dark thoughts cast a veil over the sunlit day. I lift my head to shake it away, to catch a glimpse of blue sky. A light rain strikes my face, just a kiss of descending mist. I’m gladdened by this bit of fairy magic. I look around me for the inevitable rainbow, but it cannot be seen. Its arch descends from directly above me. I am the pot of gold.