Post Election Reflections and Quarter Life Crises

Today is the day after Election Day, and I stayed up all night to watch the historic moment. Barack Obama’s achievement is not only historic in terms of being the first African American president, but is historic in its potential for how much change the entire world will undergo socially, economically, militarily, almost every aspect that possibly could be changed I feel will be changed. Not only because of Barack Obama, but because the general populace wants something different in the world and Obama just happens to symbolize that. That very thought has made my head reel in terms of my own personal history and placement in society. You would think that the moment Obama spoke in front of thousands to accept his nomination as the 44th President I would be able to magically know exactly what I want life to be like in that optimistic future Obama proposes. Which brings me here, to Dublin, to my current state of self-awareness. There are a few things that I was not expecting out of this trip. I came here to find myself in a lot of ways, but all I’m finding out is how confused I am about life: my current priorities, my future, even things as simple as what I truly enjoy doing is a total bafflement to me. In this era of economic crisis, social change, and burst of involvement within the public sphere, I feel like I should do something different and important. Since my surroundings are new and familiar, I expected a switch to go on, a flame to burst, to have this grand epiphany of my life’s calling. What I expected within the first few weeks here was to get a call on my mobile from a deity saying something on the lines of “Hi Caitlin, I just thought you should know that you’re good at juggling, you like circuses, therefore you should be a clown.” Instead I feel so stuck in the mud in a lot of ways. I feel this inability to feel like I have a certain place in this big city and big world, and that task of finding myself seems so daunting that I keep pushing off any major changes to my way of thinking and how I perceive the world. I so wish I could tell everyone that I am changing for the better, that I’m more self aware, but today I feel as lost as ever, as definitionless as I could be, even on one of the most historic days of the short 21 years of my life.