2.24

Part One

Around eleven years ago I was driving back to Dallas after a visit back home. The drive from Pampa to Dallas is as long as it is flat and uneventful. You hit a few small canyons a ways outside of town that, when the sunlight hits them as it lowers, become a beautiful contrast of light and shadow. After that you are left with a view of the horizon that stretches on and on until it meets the sky in a thin line. You turn once in another small Texas town at which point you are on the road you will be on for the next five hours. (In Texas we tell distance in time so I couldn't tell you how many miles away Dallas is from Pampa if my life depended on it. I could, however, tell you that it will take you around five and a half hours now that the speed limit has increased to 75 mph. That is, of course, if you drive the speed limit. People have made it there faster.) On this long stretch of road the only changes are in the name of the small town you are passing through. You eventually become an expert at knowing which towns have the most vigilant traffic officers. (Don't speed through Chillicothe, for example.) Eventually you will either turn in Decatur (watch out for that curve) or you will drive straight down into Fort Worth.

On this particular drive eleven years ago I was nineteen, I had a boyfriend, two cats, a best friend, a flip phone (no texting or anything; this was pre-smartphone era), and was struggling with a question that would stay with me for years to come. I've recently read that Millennials, of which I'm apparently one of the "older" ones, do not find satisfaction in accomplishing a long tenured job but instead seek fulfillment by making some marked difference in the world around them. It's a desire that can't be satiated by promotion or a plaque. We have this strange ideology that life was probably worthless if we didn't achieve something great. This social phenomenon has its drawbacks - a major one being a disregard for being grateful in "the small things." Another drawback is the staggering unlikelihood that you will achieve something you feel was good enough in your lifetime. This compulsion drives a lot of millennials' decision making. No longer are they staying with a single job or company for forty years. Now they are switching jobs frequently, rarely remaining with any company for longer than five years. There is a yearning to do more; to be more. That's where you would have found me eleven years ago: in my car, trying to stay awake as I drove and prayed.