My Journey in Search for The True Meaning of Life

Through times of misbehavior, jesting and complex trivial situations, I finalized my search and concluded my results ending with the people I consider my friends today. No matter what the problem, the time or the manner presented, my friends seemed eager to help and heighten my spirits. It was then we found ourselves, or rather we had no idea where we found ourselves nor where we were going to find ourselves, in the year 2014, in which I had successfully eluded homework and begun my search for the true meaning of life. To us my friends and me, the hallways of our school seemed blank, overshadowed only by the temporary fun we cast upon them, yet as we aged this became harder and harder to accomplish. The snow outside of our ponderous school building became not only the soulless void eating at our city but soon consumed our minds and hearts in the same fashion. We grew tired and weary, yearning for color and sound, our ears perked at the vibrancy of freedom, the colors and motions of a foreign world.

And it began, first softly then every so often, a murmur, a whisper of sudden might; it came to us and begged us, you must all go. We listened, drew nearer and duly signed our parts. Astonished, we were accepted, amazed at our prize; we were going to leave this place and were headed for our future, a future that held surprise and tonic. A simple drama trip to Austria looked to us poetic and charming, a stark contrast to our reality at hand. Endlessly we waited, it seemed months would crawl by before our trip; day after day it appeared to become more distant and as by us perceived, it became so. The week prior felt years too long. We scratched and itched with the desire to depart; school proved a prolonged and boring subject to us, even our tongues wished to taste tangible talk. Saying the day arrived contains a fatal error, for us it did not simply arrive, it bound and leapt into our dimension, seeking us out like a magnet, it the positive and us the negative. I imagine it happened so, all of us in synchronisation, awoken and thrown with joy against the walls of our imaginary confinement, ready to embark on our journey. We headed to the plane with brittle hearts, one small push could have crumbled our hopes, for it was too good to be true. The takeoff seemed unreal. The landing absurd. Had we just flown through a flurry and were now back to birth? We were children gazing at our creator with surprise and glee. We had painted such an illustration of a world, in which the walls were blank and the gazes were glazed, we could not open our eyes to see the world for what it really held.

Through these occurrences laid before us my friends and I found, quite profoundly, the sense and reality we live by today.

Arriving at the Vienna Airport, our sense of prior captivity and inexpression highlighted it's embellished features and moderate extravagances. Though it seemed to us colossal, it must have, in reality, only been just as precious as the German airport from which we had just departed. Our Austrian counterparts eagerly greeted and welcomed us to their country while measuring us with their gazes. They readily walked us to our bus and allowed us to talk amongst ourselves as they told the driver the best route. We wound through the Viennese traffic, slowing down and speeding up due to its heavy traffic. Everything was, as it always was, peaceful and serene, everyone minding their own business, going where they needed to go. Nothing seemed though, as it never seemed, absurdly magical. Our minds transformed the irritating queue of cars into a single minute of delighting in a glimpse of the city as we drove through. The whole city felt, sounded and looked poetic and musical, the houses composed and ornate. The school looked no different; it was lavishly furnished and not the smallest detail nor the largest hallway had been spared from its intense luxuries. In contrast, our days in these halls seemed to fly by, but we felt as though it would never end. We played, sang, danced and performed with our peers and many people of different nations. It stopped feeling like we were part of something, we began to feel we were something. Of all the surprises Vienna presented us with, its public amusement park, a jewel among many others, placed in the dead center of the city, was the wondrous height of our journey. The smell of fresh cotton candy, the feeling of mindless consumerism, the taste of cheap hot dogs and the adrenaline rush of the roller coaster. We slowly transitioned into our main task of purchasing tickets and standing in line for the ferris wheel that dominated the skyline. The line proved an easy task once in; we sat down and waited for it to begin. Moving gradually, ever so slowly we made our way up above the city.

The colors, so beautiful, unexplainably complementary and unique. This stunning reality had to stay within our grasp; it was ours and would stay ours forever. We soon realized our dilemma, our stay in the air was limited. Time, as always, didn’t speed up, slow down or travel in reverse, it stayed constant, a cold material constant. To us, I hold to it, it occurred with the same strange and cruel methodicalness in which time always occurs, instantly drowning in an ocean, we struggled, swam, some cried for a life guard; we had realized that all good and likewise evil, anything and everything was limited. Time was the only constant, which meant time controlled all other things. The doors of our enclosure opened, we washed out unto the shore, free from the waves and tribulations. Yet although our journey on the wheel ended and ultimately we ended snug in our beds, back from a week in the magic city, we realized that the magic controlled by our perception, our grasping of time had not and would never end.