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I have come to the conclusion that I don't know anything. Well apart from things I learn in class, school work, and the fact that I know that I don't know anything, I don't know anything. I don’t know if destiny or faith are realistic or just ideas that serve as blankets of security for those afraid of the unknown. I don't know if life has a premeditated purpose or if I'm simply overcomplicating and overromanticizing the fact that I'm alive, breathing, and have a conscious mind. I don't know if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, or if that's even a thing. My perspective of life changes regularly because it's hard to accept the fact that I will never have concrete answers to these theories. But sometimes I have moments of clarity. Moments where the background noise of life quiets, just for a second, and I feel as if life is winking at me. Moments where I feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be (even if that's another way of creating a self-made and unrealistic sense of security).
Today in my Reinventing Berlin's Economy class we discussed gentrification in detail. Amidst this discussion, a phenomenon was mentioned. The gist of it goes like this: the property value of a house exponentially raises once a layer of paint is added to the exterior. Once this was discussed, I was no longer 18, no longer in class, and no longer in Berlin. Instead, I was 14, in the passenger seat of my grandfather's red KIA, looking around at the exposed red brick that drapes my city in an ashy orange, asking him “how come none of the houses of La Paz are painted pretty?”
The conversation became an elongated one full of the oversimplification of economic tendencies, political corruption, and other socio-political theories, quickly becoming one of the core memories of my young adulthood.
I felt so grown up in that passenger seat. I thought to myself that I had everything figured out, being able to maintain a mature conversation as an equal, I was ready to conquer the world. I spewed opinions left and right often to find a smirk on my grandfather's face as I spoke with certainty and assertiveness, coming completely out of nowhere. I thought I knew everything. Plans clear in mind, I was going to be a premed student at Harvard the same way I was going to be a professional ballerina for the Miami City Ballet simultaneously. Obviously, blatantly unaware of the technicalities of life, I was untouched by the darkness of grief, and naive to the idea that you might not be able to be everything you want in one lifetime.
Now, having the same conversation in more complex terms, four years later, thoughts of independence and semi-adulthood cloud my head with added responsibilities and numerous to-do lists. I am unsure of everything and anything. Question marks pepper most of my thoughts about the future and I'm just trying to “go with the flow” (which to be quite frank, is completely out of character). But it's not a bad thing, actually, it's kind of exciting. I'm simply in a constant state of “figuring things out.” Something deemed normal for an 18-year-old (no matter how unsettling).
But in this conversation, as I sat in class, I had a moment of clarity, where for a second everything went quiet and I felt the ambitious 14-year-old I once was gleaming with pride and certainty. I was being winked at by life, by my grandfather, by something. And maybe this “moment of clarity” is yet another attempt to hold onto yet another self-constructed idealized feeling that “I'm doing life right” or “I'm meant to be here”. But they are moments where I bask in temporary security and excitement for the future. Moments where for a few seconds the unknown is not so scary.