Dear McKenna, I hope you were able to make the ‘enough’ seem cosmic.
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Dear McKenna,
I was watching Star Trek as my mother made attempts at stringing together poorly worded phrases into cohesive English sentences, trying to express some passing thought. Eventually, she said “if you say enough things in your life, you’re bound to be right at some point.” There was an almost inappropriate depth to her words considering the context which inspired it and the laughter that followed. I suppose that’s why I remember those words out of everything she said that day. The idea felt all too reflective of the way many of us live our lives. The way I’ve lived my life. We do and say and love as much as we can. An unfortunate case of quantity over quality. And, we hope at some point we’ll get it right. We hope that something will feel right.
I wonder now in an all too philosophical manner if that is the very thing that defines the human condition; if that is what outlines this “labyrinth of suffering” in which we are all incased, as John Green called it. We spend our existences chasing an affirmation of sorts. Something that tells us, “You found it”. Perhaps in divine intervention or in the smile of someone we pass in 10 years on the train in Philadelphia. For myself, high school was the pinnacle of that sentiment. I hoped that high school would make me feel as though there was something to live through. But you know this well.
You went to public school to find it. You listened to vinyl records on Sunday afternoons to find it. You drove across downtown Los Angeles with your friends at 11:32pm to find it. You forced yourself to be with the wrong people to find it.
You spent Saturday nights studying 1980s movies to find it. You introduced yourself to people you would never speak to again to find it. You went to parties with people who bored you to find it. You became an amalgamation of everyone but yourself to find it. You took every class you could, looking to find it.
When I look to you, it’s all vivid, but in a vague sense. I see an apartment in New York City. Small. Simple. Clean. I see scripts, most of which you wrote, and notepads overflowing on each and every surface. I see a Dalmatian named Fitzgerald, after the late great Ella. I see monthly encounters with friends from college and Sunday Afternoons writing at a coffee shop two blocks over. I see all the photographs on your walls – people you cherish and short-lived experiences and faraway places and everything in between. I see all the mistakes which got you there. And, I know you are grateful for it all.
So now, I’ll go to college to find it. I’ll study abroad for a year to find it. I’ll start a career in something I love or hate to find it. I’ll get married at 28 to find it. I’ll get divorced at 32 to find it. I’ll spend my entire life trying to find it, until at some point I’ll look back. You’ll look back. You’ll see all the places you went and all the people you loved and all the experiences you lived through, and you’ll allow yourself, for a moment, to believe that in an accumulative sense - you found it. Or at least, you found enough.
So, all I can hope to do now is learn to make the enough seem cosmic. I hope you were able to do that.
Love,
McKenna
