I’ve been thinking. Tonight at Allison’s we watched Good Will Hunting, and even though I’ve totally seen the movie before, this little (well, pretty long actually) passage got me thinking:

SEAN (Robin Williams)
I thought about what you said to me the other day, about my painting.

WILL (Matt Damon)
Yeah?

SEAN
Stayed up half the night thinking about it. Something occurred to me, I fell into a deep peaceful sleep, and I haven’t thought about you since. You know what occurred to me?

WILL
No.

SEAN
You’re just a kid. You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.

WILL
Why thank you.

SEAN
It’s all right. You’ve never been out of Boston.

WILL
Nope.

SEAN
So, if I asked you about art, you’d probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo. You know a lot about him. Life’s work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But I bet you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. Seen that….If I ask you about women, you’d probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can’t tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You’re a tough kid. I ask you about war, you’d probably uh…throw Shakespeare at me, right? “Once more into the breach, dear friends.” But you’ve never been near one. You’ve never held your best friend’s head in your lap, and watched him gasp his last breath looking to you for help. I ask you about love, y’probably quote me a sonnet. But you’ve never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable…known someone that could level you with her eyes. Feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you..who could rescue you from the depths of Hell. And you wouldn’t know what it’s like to be her angel, and to have that love for her be there forever. Through anything. Through cancer. And you wouldn’t know about sleepin’ sittin’ up in a hospital room for two months, holding her hand because the doctors could see in your eyes that the terms visiting hours don’t apply to you. You don’t know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love something more than you love yourself. I doubt you’ve ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you: I don’t see an intelligent, confident man. I see a cocky, scared shitless kid. But you’re a genius, Will. No one denies that. no one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine and ripped my fuckin’ life apart. You’re an orphan, right? Do you think I’d know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally, I don’t give a shit about that, because you know what? I can’t learn anything from you I can’t read in some fuckin’ book. Unless you wanna talk about you, who you are. And I’m fascinated. I’m in. But you don’t wanna do that, do you, sport? You’re terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

I feel like at this point in my life I’ve experienced maybe a few more emotions than maybe some other kids my age. My father battled leukemia for seven years and finally lost the fight when I was a senior in high school, before I even graduated. My mother has a crippling neurological disease and I feel like another little piece of my heart breaks everytime I watch her struggle to get up off the couch, when I think about the fact that barring an act of God (which I’m still waiting on), this disease will eventually kill her. Most days these days it’s a struggle, a fight with myself, to even get out of bed in the morning. I battle constantly with my life, with what I’ve been given.

But it’s what I’ve been given. And I deal the best I can. I’ve been going to counseling, because I finally realized with the help of friends and my family, that I can’t do it all. I don’t know it all. And it’s okay to need and ask for help. I’m not saying that I’ve gone through “more” or “worse” things in my life than anyone else. Yes, my Daddy died, and it was awful. But I don’t know what it’s like to have my dad, the man who is supposed to teach me how to relate to men, beat me every day, or for my mom to be indifferent to my very existence. Both my parents have loved me the best way they knew how, and I can’t ask for more. All I’m saying is that sometimes it feels like people are complaining about a hangnail when I’m missing an entire finger.

I’m 21. And I don’t know as much as I will when I’m 40. And when I’m 40 I won’t know as much as I will when I’m 80. And when I’m 80, I’ll sit and watch all the 20-year-olds running around making stupid mistakes, mistakes I’ll know they have to make, because I made them too, once. Mistakes like thinking they know everything, like they know ANYTHING. So I’m just going to shutup, hold my tongue, and listen when my Mamaw speaks, even if I don’t like what she has to say. I’ll listen to my mother when she tells me things, because I can feel the love behind her words, because she just wants me to be safe and happy and loved. I’ll listen when my friends speak, because even though they’re my age or even younger, I can and hope to always learn from another human being, from another point-of-view. And I’ll listen when my brother speaks, because even as goofy as he is, he still manages to stop me in my tracks with the depth of insight he brings to our relationship sometimes.

But in the (adapted) words of Robin Williams, “I’m just a kid. I don’t have the faintest idea what I’m talking about.”