I was born in a small town in the Northeast, and for the first decade of my life, I was fascinated with every new thing I saw. I had become captivated when I saw my first train or when I learned in school that there were numbers that were less than zero. Though this childlike wonder lasted for only so long, my delusion of the world dwindled. Each year, my mind became increasingly aware of cruel people and what this world truly is. When I entered high school, I longed for the days when I believed that trains were the most remarkable thing I had seen or how each piece of information taught at school amazed me.
Once I had entered college, my mind had been entirely freed from the imprisonment of delusion, and with this, I had lost all interest in the sensations around me. People annoyed me much more now. I could not live in the dormitories as they were a cesspool of the cynicism of humans. I was entirely out of place. Many times during the school year, I would find myself disinterested and unsuitable in what I was studying for. I could not live like this any longer. Going to classes became all the more tedious, and halfway through my second year of college, I stopped attending lectures altogether.
I found an apartment outside of town and locked myself inside, and after my family detected my refusal to learn, they stopped paying my rent. Each day that passed from this moment on was the same, and I reminded myself, “yesterday is just like today, and tomorrow will be just like yesterday.” For the first few months, I was fully content and secluded from the world I was born into as I created my own in my room. Nevertheless, when my money began to dwindle, I was evicted.
I was forced to reenter the world I was alienated from, and I wandered and hitchhiked from town to town, sleeping wherever I could. After months of traveling, I landed at a bar outside of a small town in Indiana and made a deal with the owner: If I worked, I could sleep there. The bar had a second story: a small apartment never used by the owner, so I obliged. I had worked for that bar for so long that I had forgotten about my family, though I also believed that they had forgotten about me as well. During those years, I worked, slept, and drank. I had felt the same no matter where I was.
In August, during one of the worst heat waves imaginable, I cleaned the bar as an old man began to leave.
“I’m George. What’s your name?” the old man asked.
I told him mine, and he asked for my story. I told him my past, believing I would never see him again, and he said back to me, “I felt the same as you. Many others do. However, I found my place in the world by farming. I own a farm not far from here. Maybe you’d find your place the same way I did.”
I asked him why he was telling me this, and he quickly said, “you looked the same as me when I was young. Especially those eyes.”
I took up his offer and went to his farm the next day. “He understood me.” A thought I did not think about with any other human. I had learned from him the art of agriculture: Planting, fertilizing, watering, and harvesting, and I felt that this was something that nothing else was.
Right.
