day twenty five: worth

From sisyphus:

Was it worth it? Why (not)?

There’s something kind of cool about being asked if it was worth it by someone going by the name Sisyphus. I mean, really. As we know, Sisyphus is that guy who was stuck in the underworld, having to roll a boulder uphill (and then reaching a certain point and having the boulder roll to the bottom of the hill) for eternity. This is either a total bummer or the key to happiness, depending on whether or not you dig Albert Camus. (“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”) So I suppose that however Sisyphus would answer this question about worth would depend on whether or not his heart is filled by the struggle, but I imagine that while rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity, the question of worth probably crossed his mind a time or two.

That is, of course, if Sisyphus were real. Though I’m sure that the person going by the name Sisyphus who asked me this question is real, because I doubt that myths can type.

Anyway, it’s quite an open question, isn’t it? I mean, was what worth it? I could pick anything. The amount of choices I have is overwhelming, to the point that I’m not sure if I can narrow myself down to one specific thing. I’ve made millions of choices over the course of my life. Some were wise and some were… not. But if I am the sum of my choices, then… well. They all were worth it somehow, weren’t they?

(I suppose you have to imagine the wry grin that accompanies the question closing out the above paragraph.)

I tend to be both impulsive and an overthinker. Somehow it works. I weigh my decisions very carefully up to a point, and then I tend to jump at things. Sometimes when I’m in the middle of things, I might wish that I’d chosen differently, when I have those moments of “Why the hell did I ever think this was a good idea?” But in the words of Lady Macbeth, what’s done cannot be undone. Unlike Lady Macbeth, however, I haven’t let regret drive me mad. Yet. I do wash my hands a lot, though. I’m a bit OCD. (Everyone who knows me just laughed and said “A bit?”)

The thing is, I’ll never know, when it comes to major life decisions, how my life would be different if I’d chosen something else. Deciding at literally the absolutely last possible minute to go to Albion College instead of any of the other schools where I’d been accepted opened the door to me spending four months in Italy looking at art and drinking wine and occasionally making out with random dudes, and it wasn’t the most practical choice for off-campus study (if I’d been practical, I’d have done something that might’ve led me toward a post-college career), but hell. Italy. And if I hadn’t been impractical and gone to Italy, then I might’ve ended up with a job right after I graduated and then I wouldn’t have been able to spend that time camping in Poland and then I wouldn’t have met who is probably still the nicest guy I’ve ever known (who is also ridiculously good-looking), and nothing ever came of that because, well, he lives in Poland, but I smile when I think about it and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. And I also wouldn’t have ended up with that miserable newspaper job, and if I hadn’t had that miserable newspaper job, I wouldn’t have ended up interviewing that guy who turned the tables and interviewed me and offered me a job on the spot (thereby allowing me to quit aforementioned miserable newspaper job), and if I hadn’t quit that job later on because of the psycho hose beast who made me cry every day, I wouldn’t have done that year in AmeriCorps and worked with those amazing kids, and then I wouldn’t have moved to Ann Arbor to learn Arabic just because, and then I wouldn’t have come back to help out my grandmother (who at the time seemed like maybe she wasn’t going to make it much longer, but she did, that tough old bird), and then I wouldn’t have gotten that job that I eventually got laid off from, and then I wouldn’t have had The Long Unemployment, and then I wouldn’t be where I am right now. And you know, I like where I am right now. It’s pretty good.

So, yep. Worth it.