there's not a whole lot going on


Thursday, October 23, 2008

Doing

One who pays heed to the wind will not sow, and one who watches the clouds will never reap. --Ecclesiastes 11:3-4
Jamie looked out the window for the hundredth time that morning. She simply did not know what to do with her life. Graduation would be coming along in three months, and though she'd filled out applications and interviewed for jobs, she still couldn't make up her mind. With applications to countries across the nation, interviews with corporations around the world, many of them successful, others less so, she still could make no decisions.

As the clouds scudded across a pale blue sky, she sighed, also for the hundredth time, and plopped her head into her hands. She told her boyfriend Tommy that she was so desperate to know which path to take, she was on the verge of going to a palm reader. All he did was laugh and kiss her cheek, then propose she burn everything and run away with him to the Bahamas where they would live for the rest of their lives on coconuts.

She rolled her eyes and reprimanded him, "Tommy you know you can't live on coconuts! We would have to have jobs and a home to live in. Besides, we'd never know which hurricane was going to wipe us and everything we had off the face of the earth!"

"Well, yeah, but you don't know which of these corporations is going to lay you off three months after hiring you or which school is going to make you miserable for the next six years."

"I know! That's the problem! I've got to figure out which one is the least likely to ruin my life!"

Tommy smiled, kissed her forehead and let himself out the door, leaving Jamie staring out the window wishing the clouds could tell her the end of each possible path. Shaking her head in frustration, she followed Tommy out the door, hoping she'd be able to catch him before he made it to his car.

He was just turning the key when she tapped on the passenger side window asking if he wanted to go for a ride. As they drove through town, heading to the dirt roads just on the outskirts, Jamie began, "You know, Tommy, with all this uncertainty about what I should do next with my life, there's one thing that's clear. It's the only certainty I've got right now, and I'm afraid that I might lose it once we've graduated and you go your way and I go mine. I mean, when I'm in who knows where and you're in. Well, you haven't told me where you're going yet." She looked at him quizzically. "Where are you going?"

Laughing, Tom squeezed her hand. "I'm going wherever you're going! Even if it is the Bahamas!"

Jamie's quiet, "Oh," was almost inaudible as she realized what he'd just said.

A few minutes later, she looked at him again, this time as though she could see into his brain, or at least as though that was what she hoped would happen. "Well, then, I guess it doesn't matter where I go. How's about Berkeley?"

"You remember that fall starts in May in Berkeley, right?"

"Oh, good point, well in that case, we should definitely go to the Bahamas," she winked at him. "But, really, what do you think about Kansas?"

"Kansas, good Lord, whatever would I do in Kansas?"

She winked again, "Be with me!"

...to be continued

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