I'm writing the last paper due this semester on free will. It's a pretty crazy topic that, in my opinion, isn't even worth arguing about because either way people will either ignore the scientific data, or the scientific data doesn't go far enough to know this or that. We had a presentation in class on Friday and it was really interesting, though. The guest speaker was a psychologist and he talked to us about a scientific project where they figured out that a persons subconscious knows before the conscious mind knows that a person is going to do a given action. It's miliseconds before, but the evidence is there. Therefore, the man argued, the only 'free will' that we have is in our conscious, and so our subconscious will tell us to do something and we can will ourselves not to do it. You want to tell somebody something super bad, and your subconscious has it all in order, but you choose not to. You go to catch a falling cactus but stop half way realizing what you're about to catch. That sort of thing.

I'm a horrible decision maker. I swear my subconscious, or my conscious, or both have errors. Trying to find out deep down what I want is hard. Trying to choose between two great options is terrible. I had a really good talk with a co-worker today. He was in a great, long term relationship with a girl he was absolutely in love with. At 21 he could have married the girl. Instead, since he's 21 and young, he broke up with her to be single for a while and explore life, work, travel, just be and do whatever, and wait till he's older to make that commitment, which he wants with that same girl.

I've thought a million times that I wish I could live the years of my 20s through a couple of times. I feel like this is a sort of 'prime' of life. I feel like I have my goals in mind, that I'm young enough and old enough. But mostly young. I feel like there's too much pressure in these 20's though. Decisions aren't just choices. They begin to absolutely define you and become you.

The idea of marriage has been a really bitter-sweet concept for me. I know that sounds bad, but I'll try to explain, and if you don't get it then just get from this that marriage is something to look forward to, and that I am, and ignore the rest because I don't know if I can explain it well enough to leave you thinking that I want to get married, truly. Everyone knows the "sweet" part of marriage. Living life together, flowers and roses, even the bad can be good sometimes... yeah yeah yeah we all know this, or at least heard it. The last two and a half to three months have been crazy, thoughtful, intense months for me. They've been nuts, and there are scarce who I've been able to try to invest my thoughts in to see how the rebound turns out. I see people who seem to view marriage negatively. People, friends, talk about how life will change, and I will change. To the extreme of that the Lacey I am now will die and I'll be Lacey-Daniel. That all of a sudden Lacey-ness individiuality/goals will be stripped away and gone and lost and that it's inevitable that we will be that lame couple who sits at home together, forever, with no friends, no social life, no individuality, struggling to get more money all the time and that I'll never achieve those things now. If you have one you have the other. Cheesy smiles and loving gazes that no one misses and annoys all. At outings the girls chit-chat and gossip with the other wives and the guys watch sports, and we bake goodies and buy things and smile and wave and ignore all our single friends until they get married. After marriage it's just babies and cleaning and responsibility and lack of freedom and one straight narrow path to follow for enternity. These are some of the bitters I have felt from people around me, and thought about, and gotten angry about, and detested, and revolted against, and even agreed with - when speaking about the general public. It's made me slightly bitter inside thinking that people actually think that it's inevitable for some or all of these things to occur, and that I'll be lame because I'll be married, and it's caused me to become angry with those who are "freer" than me and frustrated with these cliches and stereotypes seemingly being pressed on me.

When my co-worker told me about the story, I saw myself. I saw myself with the person I love and want to be with forever. I see the proposal, the coffee slipping out of my hand, the words "THIS IS HUGE" flashing in front of my face, and not being able to speak. Seeing two paths. I felt young, too young, and scared, and overwhelmed, and happy, and excited, and scared, and silent, with a guy down on one knee in front of me willing and wanting to spend all the rest of his living days with me. I saw myself choosing the same path my co-worker did and wondering what I'd be like if I did, how life would be for me if I had said "just wait for me, just two, three, five years till I feel more ready" and quitting university and travelling and struggling and fighting the way society typically works. It's a terrifying, and exhilerating thought - I don't think I could do it. Obviously I couldn't because I didn't choose it. It's technically "the opposite" of what I've chosen, but what my co-worker, in essence, has chose. It's what I could have chosen, and the thought crossed my brain.

I wonder what my subconscious was saying to me when Daniel asked me to marry him. There's no way I could ever know. Either I agreed with it or disagreed with it, and controlled it one way or the other (according to the presentor of Friday's Philosophy 100 class). Maybe it was telling me to marry him, that this is what I've wanted and this is what I want, and I was fighting it in a way because of all these notions of freedom and cliche and life I had thought about previously. Maybe it was telling me that I am too young and have to let loose for a while before settling down, and I disagreed, and fought it saying I can do the things I want and be what I want to be and achieve what I want to achieve and be married. It's like that mid-air reflex to catch the cactus. Sometimes if you listen to your subconscious you'll wind up with a cactus-hand.

For whatever reason, the typical, the cliche, the stereotypical is negative in my mind. But if you look at my life of a white middle class female going to university to become a highschool english school teacher, getting married to a middle class white male whose a carpenter and we go to church and ..... My life is almost the pure definition of stereotypical. For whatever reason, that bothers me, and I want to revolt. I admire those who live life different. For whatever reason, I want to be that difference, too. Maybe it's impossible, or contradictory for me to believe that I can live a 'different' sort of life than the average materialistic hungry consumer living for wealth and status. This is what's been standing in my way of being completely content with my life. I see how stereotypical I am/I seem. Maybe I'm completely derranged to think that I am even slightly more advanced/think differently than the vast popularity. Something in me just desires to revolt and stray and this is why the concept of marriage has been the scariest concept for me -- not because I do not want it, but because of what it appears to be, what people have seemed to tell me it is and how my life will be, and I can't handle it, and it angers and frustrates me that people see me as "that", whatever "that" is, -- even though "that" might not be a bad thing, it still is what it is. Whatever it is, has been occupying my thoughts for a long time now, and here is some of it, and where I sort of stand now, I think.