Giving Back

So I’m faced with another late night in front of the TV and computer at my parents’ place, wondering where the years have gone by and why I’ve sacrificed a life that could have lead to a decent apartment, a pretty intellectual girlfriend, and a stable job in cubicleville. Such thoughts are to be expected. But what really hit home for me this time was the arrival of my brother from Beijing for the week, in town for business and a wedding. He and my mother decided to have “the talk” with me. No, not the sex talk… I think I’m a few too many years old for that. The responsible talk.

I don’t know why I feel like sharing this with the Matador Community. Certainly, there are many out there who can relate, but none of your life experiences, however elegantly written, can really help me. At the end of the day, or even in the middle of it, I’m alone with my thoughts, and they’ve just been driving me crazy lately. My most recent travels took me to New Zealand, another grand adventure filled with stories, pictures, women, nights of debacles, deep political discussions, cultural insight, blah, blah, BLAH.

What’s the point? These past five years, I’ve been a taker, pure and simple. In Couchsurfing terms, I’ve surfed more often than hosted. I’ve traveled and absorbed culture before sharing my own. And while these things are great for personal development and seeing the world, from my perspective, it feels like I’m tipping the karmic scale. I need to contribute to something. Even my writing has been suffering lately, due to my increasing guilt over this matter. I can’t seem to find peace, nor do I think I’ll ever be able to without denying everything I believe to be right. I want to have my cake and eat it too, as cliché as that sounds. I want the life that has made me who I am, but I want the contrasting life to make me appreciate the other side: the picket fence, the doting girlfriend, the dog who waits for you…

Maybe it’s just time catching up to me. I just turned 28 a few weeks ago, and while that isn’t old by any standard, it’s different. It’s closer to an age we don’t normally associate with traveling around the world with no worries. It’s an age that makes us think of someone with means and resources, someone who has found their niche and spent time building on it. In that respect, I have nothing, and I have done nothing.