Minding My Own Mind

After a pleasantly insightful conversation over coffee and soft background music, it struck me that my approach to life might not have changed as much in the past three years. In my late teens, I really believed my unquiet spirit would only be satisfied if it was fed in the highest academic environment there could be. I assumed that being intellectually challenged would provide an endlessly sublime experience. I really couldn’t picture myself doing something other than studying in the U.S. In the end, despite all my efforts, I never got to have this experience. It’s been a year since those academic plans went down, but I no longer mourn about this – I am certain that I wouldn’t have found what I’m still looking for at Harvard or Yale. Today I query myself, how did it once occur to me that happiness depended on having access to Ivy League education? Perhaps I just attributed the achievement of some kind of enlightenment to being drunk on intense intellectual activity.
Lately I’ve been searching for answers elsewhere, but I find myself haunted by the thought that I might still be pursuing the wrong things, even if the reasons are right. Thoughts and more thoughts, they never leave me! I can’t help rationalizing just about everything. Does the reliance on a mind that conceptualizes feelings of compassion and love indicate the existence of a dry heart? I would hate to admit this, but it seems like I have become too comfortable with the feeling of melancholy that follows reflective thought-processing. What on Earth has happened to me?