[The Unknown: A Million Little Pieces]

"No one is more shocked than I," says Robert Mason in the epilogue to his book Chickenhawk. 

Mason is referring to his arrest and imprisonment following his return from Vietnam. Mason was arrested for drug dealing, even though he had never used until he returned from 'Nam, to deal with the nightmares he couldn't overcome, vestiges of the war-scenes he had lived through, memories of men he would never see again. A destitute law-breaker - not someone he had ever thought he would become.

Am I the person I thought I would become? I don't know. I don't even know if I thought about who I would become. I thought about, and still think about, what I want to achieve. I want to become a writer, and maybe a professor. I want to become an accomplished and successful equestrian. But achievements do not define who you are. I have met successful people whom I would never trust with my back turned. What kind of person do I want to be? A good person, a kind person. A person who touches other's lives in meaningful, positive ways. A person who reaches out, who is there without being asked. A person that serves others.

Concentrating on this question, posing it to myself, causes me to worry. It causes me to evaluate the person I  am today, to wonder if I like what I see. My life is laid be fore me, a million little stepping stones, endlessly the same, ending a day at a time. I watch it pass, at times at a terrifyingly fast pace, at others, painfully slow, and it’s damn scary. Three years ago I was a fresh-faced freshman with a winner-takes-all view on life, ready to conquer the world. I can’t feel how I felt that year, again. Five years ago I was a high school junior, making the seemingly all important college decision. I can’t remember what I was hoping to find then. Ten years ago I was a carefree little kid, with the world at my fingertips. I can’t remember how that felt, either. It’s funny, how you get older and the world slips away. You feel like you’re chasing it down, a step at a time but it stays just out of reach. Sometimes I feel up to the challenge, and I follow that world, believing I’ll catch it in time. It’s an illusion, and so I sink away. I lose the desire, the feeling of challenge, of inspiration, of the power to make my future. I’m a cog in a wheel, a tool that has no more control over the outcome than a mindless machine. 

I don't want to reach a point in my life feeling like Robert Mason, wondering at, and being shocked by, the person I have become. And so, I must learn to accept the little pieces, the daily challenges. Must learn to build the stepping stones into something greater. That is the challenge. To be an artist, a sculptor. Maybe I should add that to the list. A sculptor of my million pieces, the pieces that make up who I am. And, like an artist, to constantly work at them, to change them, to add them together to create something beautiful.