Where are you going?
Fine Arts student takes on Dave Matthews' most daunting question
July 4, 2005
Joel Bentley
There’s a place where people like me go. It’s an underground society where there is no sense of direction. We live by candlelight in silence. We do not speak of the future – for fear of it. Nor do we speak of the life we once lived, full of hope and joy and Friday night excursions.
You see, I am one of those people who has lost direction, or never had it. I am one of those people who does not know what to do with his life.
“What are you going to do with your degree, Joel?”
“Wallow in the streets in self pity, thinking of a hundred other ways I could have spent sixty grand.”
Sixty thousand dollars in tuition and I still have no clear direction. I never knew faith could cost so much.
Some say people are hard to avoid. People are easy to avoid. There are several havens to be found, even here on campus. There’s the prayer room, collegiums you don’t belong to, washrooms (if you are avoiding a member of the opposite gender), and so on. Questions, on the other hand, are hard to avoid. Questions follow me wherever I go. They follow me home. They even find me in my car, alone, cornered. I’ll turn on the radio and hear Dave Matthews singing, “Where are you going?” Shut up, Dave.
Hoping to find some condolence, I asked a fellow Art Major if she knew what she’d be doing upon graduation: “Of course. I wouldn’t waste my time and money going to Trinity if I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
Then there’s you: all of you. You are my worst enemy. Daily you pester me. Daily you inquire. “Oh, you’re a Fine Arts Major. What do you want to do with that?”
“I don’t know!”
My wide-eyed outburst usually hinders the conversation from quietly moving onto another topic. Instead, I endure an unpleasant amount of awkward silence and obscure facial expressions. You look at me as if I’m a nutcase. You are starting to make me a believer.
I’d rather think of more appealing questions that won’t determine my well-being for the rest of my life. Questions like, “Is beautimous a real word? Because if it’s not, it should be.”
One co-worker attempted to answer the nagging question for me: “So you’re a photographer, right? So you could get a job at a magazine or something taking pictures of naked women?”
“I suppose that’s one option.”
But it’s not my options that are limited; it’s my vision, my direction. I sing on Sunday, “Jesus, be my vision / Be my hope / Be my guide / Jesus,” but prayers as such are not easily answered.
One of my favourite moments of the day lasts no more than a few seconds. Between the close of the car door and the opening of the house door, there is a moment, a glance up at the stars. It is often just that, a glance, but there are times when I allow myself to delay my destination – my mind distracted from the pillow by the beauty of the black and white and blue.
Our dreams are stars, scattered across a million miles of black canvas. They seem absent during the day, hidden behind the hustle and bustle of our busy lives, but they are ever present. We need only to wait for a cloudless night to see them shine. “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps” (Pr. 16:9). One day my own dream will awake. In the meantime, I’m slowly learning to let God guide me through the fog.
Now you go...
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