The best kind of inspiration is the kind that you don't expect
The kind that slaps you in the face because it is so random.
A few days ago I went outside for a smoke, and I ran into a man who was friends with a guy I was with. I'm not sure the name of this inspirational individual, but I do remember his British accent.
Pardon me, an American raised in the Harry Potter generation, for thinking that British accents make everything much more magical.
Whatever his name was, I'll someday find out in another chance meeting outside the residence hall, but the way he spoke was so eloquent, and the magic came in waves.
He told me about passion for his field of study, but he spoke of it like no one I know who is as passionate about anything. His passion for architecture. How he would deny the very things that make up or at least sustain our human existence in order to achieve higher ranking or at least fulfillment in his field.
I found out how taxing it is, he said to me as he exchanged chainsmoked cigarettes, hands shaking, i'm not sure if it was out of excitement or it was just damn cold outside.
I'm pretty sure my eyes sparkled as he spoke about the things that inspired him and the lengths he was willing to go for them.
It made me feel lazy and uninspired.
I immediately went back to my dorm room and produced fantastic amounts of assigned work in my sketchbook.
Needless to say, inspiration is something that is passed down.
It is a contagious thing that you catch by chance. There is no liquid inspiration for sale at the local supermarket, but you know that.
Hard to come by, I do wish I had a vial of it at times.
For, it is so easy to be uninspired.
And I digress, with a comment on my dying generation. Is it just us who seek to self medicate through drugs and alcohol, destroying ourselves every weekend and partaking in nothingness if only to produce a few good pictures on our point and shoot cameras or a citation from the local "cops"?
I must say I do partake, and I love it. But not for the idle pleasure.
These things, they expand the ecstasy of the mind, narrowing our vision but widening our scope
Aiding our social human behavior, creating a sense of confidence
I don't care how fake these things are because they are attained through a substance, they help us reach a new level of understanding, and in fact help us mature.
If it weren't for the few beers I had at that one party, I wouldn't have met so many people that have changed my life
Nor would I have shared as much as I have with them, or at least gotten to the level of comfort where I can tell them these things, expressing love, sadness, pure anger.
I'm glad for it all. I'm glad I have jealousy.
I'm glad I have learned to deify then adore then love and now hate that prototypical hipster man in the flannel who goes to the poetry readings I wish I could without being labeled as the youth that tries to hard to partake in some counter culture movement, for attention, for whatever it is.
And I am glad for that man I met, the one who is nothing like me, doesn't wanna go to poetry readings or art museums or listen to the same music as me, yet still I find myself unexplicably attracted to him.
And life's funny like that.
Just like inspiration, we fall for the people we least expect.
And yeah, there's that film major I met in a drunken stupor weeks ago (but what feels like years) who I should be attracted to in every facet. I'm sure he'd love the revel in the beauty of the natural world alongside of me, filming all the way, me sketching the curves of his face, but no matter how much he tries to convince me to maintain my interest, simply, I want what I cannot have easily. What is not within reach. Something that is either far or impossible or complicated.
But I am in love with the idea of complication and all that goes along with it.
Who wants simplicity?
Those who want simplicity are those who are lazy and boring. Those who will just settle.
We have the rest of our senior citizen lives to settle.
Right now, I want to explore. I may hurt a few people along the way, but I swear its not my intention.
I just want to be able to look back on my memories
like Polaroids and proclaim that
I had lived.
