Natural Curiosity And Vicarious Living

Vicarious living can be a dangerous game.

If played right, it can be the antidote to the general boredom, feelings of nostalgia and homesickness. Fall too deep, however, and you can find yourself forgetting about your own life to live.

This is something I do a lot of, or at least have been doing a lot of lately. There is undoubtedly a lot of entertaining things I am going to be missing out on for 11 more months, as well as not so entertaining things. I am of course interested in the former as opposed to the latter, and anyone who hears from me could attest.

My natural curiosity in other people assists me in this game. It's pretty simple, I start by not talking about myself around people. Instead of divulging personal information from within, I focus my conversation on the person(s) I am speaking with. Through this I can gather a ton on what it's like, for instance, to have a son out of wedlock at a young age. Or what growing up on a farm is like. How working in the prison system is, the pain of leaving a wife and two children, including a newborn, for 12 dangerous months.

That's all just through face to face conversing. In my communications back home I approach things more vaguely. I ask my family and friends to send me long letters, teeming with all the happenings of their days. What I would've laughed at, the things that might have pissed me off, the beers I really would've enjoyed. If I concentrate hard enough, I can just about drink that beer and laugh at that situation.

Under just about any other circumstances, this would be a pitiful existence. There are plenty of people out there who are stuck living through everyone else, refusing to go out and try all these things for themselves. Hell, I'm probably guilty of that myself every once and a while. Sometimes a person is afraid to try things, regardless of how badly they'd like to. Some people don't always trust themselves. I'd have to say it's possible that thoughts like that may have contributed to the situation I'm in now. That's a story for another time, of course.

During a deployment, or similar circumstances (prison maybe.... haha...) a vicarious life can stabilize a mind. The ironic thing of it all is there are plenty of people flipping the situation, questioning those who have or are currently deployed in an attempt to see what it's like. Unfortunately for us, there is not enough life to do all this living in. We're resigned to friends lives, strangers lives. Even fictional lives.

Summer is ending. Responsibility is skyrocketing across the country, and the high that warm, careless days left a person with is dwindling down. So make sure you go out, give the extra effort to do some fun things, seasons and responsibilities be damned. And for the love of god, make sure you tell me all about it.

Keep on keeping on...