you must become what you are.

Cities are traditionally cast as loud, lively places where there's too much going on to hear a thought in your head. Small towns and suburbs, on the other hand, are cast as sleepy places where you can hear the crickets chirping, see the stars at night. But I have to say that for me, cities have always been the place for silence and solitude.

Visiting Chicago, I returned reflexively to that mode: walking in silence for long stretches and staring out the windows of trains, a comfortingly insignificant part of the play. It's embarrassingly narcissistic (and unproductive) how long I can listen to myself think. And startling the space a city creates for it. There's so much life that you can be alone and never feel it. So much to see that you can look and look without ever bothering to touch. For me, I spent so much time crammed in with people, I forgot what it was like to let someone in.

The smaller town I live in now has moved in on that spacious silence. At least part of it has to be the South, where everyone seems ready to talk. Another part is the smallness of the sphere, where it is impossible to be anonymous. And I think part must be that when you're not routinely crowded in with others, you start paying more attention to the person next to you.

There is also room to be heard, and therefore someone is listening for you to speak. You can't get away with silent, receptive observation for very long. Instead, you have to enter into the conversation. What you are has to be shared, for better or worse. If you're not sure what you are, you'll inevitably start learning. Whatever ghosts you carry will come awake without the cornucopia of sights to distract them into slumber.

I confess I came to Chicago feeling a little sorry for myself, and Chicago let me keep that up. It was Gainesville that wouldn't let me get away with withdrawal and self-pity. Gainesville made the difference between enduring and flourishing. By then I had stopped using my voice for long enough that I wasn't certain what it sounded like or what I had to say anymore. Not being allowed to be silent helped me find it; after four years, I'm past starting to know.

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Two quotes from this past decade's theme: 1) A dear friend: "Shannon, I try to live with a rough sketch, a framework that leaves space for unexpected beauty to appear." 2) Natasha Bedingfield: "Drench yourself in words unspoken / live your life with arms wide open / to the years where your book begins / the rest is still unwritten." (A pop starlet singing about breaking tradition and being undefined is a little laughable, but it stuck with me even so.)

Erikson's stages are totally delayed for my generation; the twenties are our time of self-discovery. My roughly-sketched friend is now studying Nietzsche, who wrote an entire book on how one becomes what one is. His framework is still loosely structured, but it's building along the scaffolds of his self-discovery. He's going directions he'd been hesitant to take but never stopped loving, and has turned from the paths others chose for him. He is becoming what he is, like an internal compass whose magnet grows stronger as he discovers. And still, as he becomes, the future sprawls wide and mysterious before him.

Five years ago I was enamored with knowing my life could be anything, at ease with a shapeless future hovering somewhere out of sight. I'm still comfortable with - excited about - all I don't know. Still in love with the possibilities of this one wild, precious life. But it also couldn't be anything anymore. Now I know what inspires me, what burns me out, what's a misuse of what I can offer. I've surprised myself by being better at some things than I'd thought, and much worse at others. I better understand who I am, and that means I have an idea of where I'm going, as well as where I'm won't go. More and more these days, my magnet points the same way every time.

It is remarkable to discover you're not floating around full of possibility, but feeling a pull - which is still full of possibility. There will undoubtedly be a host of deviations I don't foresee, and passions I don't know about until I stumble on them and they catch fire. But with each, I'm becoming what I am. And I would bet: as that internal magnet grows stronger, you get better and better at navigating your way down the turns in the path.