Looking for Nothing

If you’ve been following my blog for more than three weeks, you probably read my life post about the future.

In that post, I said:

“I’m going to be the man I wanna be.

And I’m going to be that man with those special to me

And all the strangers that walk by

On the off-chance that I make a difference in them aside from a sigh.”

Did I mean what I said? Yes. However, I admit that sometimes I’m not always at my best. I try to be, but sometimes I don’t. Some days aren’t so great and I just don’t feel like talking to people or the effort to do so seems like an additional thing that I’m not obligated to do.

Yesterday, at 1:30 am, I was bored, but not tired in the least bit. I’m usually in bed by then but I’ve been filled with energy the last few days and have been going to bed especially late while waking up just as early. My brother showed me a YouTuber about a month ago named dangmattsmith. He does comedy over chat roulette with random strangers. It looked like it could be fun although I admit I was a little uneasy about doing so. I’m a guarded individual who doesn’t jump out of his comfort zone to get to know people. Yesterday was the exception.

So I went to Omegle.com, the chat roulette site that dangmattsmith uses and gave it a shot. I mean, what else am I going to do at half past one?

The Omegle experiment went nowhere for the first half hour. Just a waste of time, people constantly skipping me and not interested in doing anything. I turned my camera towards my can pyramid that I have at school (what else is a poor college student going to build stuff with?), because I find it interesting and thought perhaps someone else would too.  

Apparently that was not the case. However, I was still bored and video games, television and reading have no allure to me at 2 in the morning so I just kept going on the off-chance that I ran into someone worth talking to. Eventually I ran into two girls that looked about 16 or so. They didn’t hit next right away, which gave me the chance to say hey and soon a conversation had begun.

I was looking at two teenage girls while they were looking at a pyramid of cans. Small talk continued until they asked to see me. I’m not the most attractive guy and don’t impress the ladies with my appearance so I hesitated to do so out of fear that I’d be skipped immediately and I was beginning to feel
inadequate after being skipped more times than I can count. I apprehensively moved the camera towards myself and got a positive reaction. To not be judged by your cover is nice. The conversation continued until the one girl went to bed and the other posed a question to me: “So, what’s your story?” I was taken back by this. I don’t share such things with strangers or better yet, people who I meet randomly online at two in the morning. Instead, we shared three true stories and one false and the other had to guess the false one, ala two truths and a lie slightly revamped. My stories were convincing and my lie unspoiled. Hers were not so lucky as I am a clever thinker and reader.

“Now what?” I asked myself. I was enjoying the conversation and would like it to continue as my pillow was still not calling my name. Rather than tell our true stories, my young friend thought of another creative idea: we guess each others. It was a fascinating premise and so I went along with it. My “personality dissection” of her was scarily accurate, down to some of the closest details, so close to the reality that I admit I impressed myself with all that I had learned about this person in a meager hour and a half. I was just amazed.

More thought-provoking conversation was had. We talked until five. That’s right, that’s not a typo. 5 in the morning. It was a conversation that I had never had before with someone I had not known a mere three and a half hours prior. She was smart far beyond her years, including using the word “usurped” in a sentence correctly, a word I thought she had misspelled when she had meant to say surprised (shows how much I know). She knew the world and how life worked incredibly well for her age at only 14 (younger than I had thought).

I was impressed but most of all I was thankful, thankful that I had randomly went onto Omegle expecting to waste a couple hours of my life and instead found someone who made those hours not just worthwhile, but life-altering.

In my opinion, there are few things more worthy of being treasured and cherished then when you went somewhere looking for nothing and ending up unveiling something incredible, like finding a pure pearl in a cracked oyster along the shore when you were just walking along the beach to waste time before you had to go to work. It shows that for once, someone or something was looking for you and further more, to them, you were a diamond that was worth digging for.

The feeling of being searched for, of being especially useful in someone else’s life, can be matched by few things. It lifts you up when you weren’t looking for a trampoline but a dry highway, and the air that rushed around you during that time you spent up in the air was a cool rush to a heated and stressed individual so that when you hit the ground, you’re running. You’re running fast. You’re searching for something again, with a whole new resolve and determination that you haven’t felt in a while. You’re smiling, more than usual and you don’t know why, but you just have this stupid grin on your face. You have this feeling in your stomach. It’s not love or the want of love. It’s not anger, fear, jealousy, or hatred. It’s happiness. Pure and unsoiled happiness. You don’t know how long that feeling is going to lie there, but I know I wish I could take it out of my stomach and look at it, admire it, draw a picture of it even though I’m artistically challenged and pin that scribble on my wall, so I can have a visual and physical model of what that feeling is.

I rip out a piece of paper and grab a pen, with no clue as to what I’m going to draw. I don’t stop to think. I just start drawing, scribbling all sorts of lines and shapes and thicks and thins. I shade in different depths of darkness and do my best to accent what I’m feeling into a picture. It only takes ten minutes so it’s not a masterpiece by any means. I look at what I’ve drawn for the first time and I’m shocked. The image that I’ve drawn, the symbol, the visual representation that I’ve drawn: is me.

I throw the picture down and run to the mirror. I look at myself, with the same shocked look on my face. I lift my hand up and close my jaw manually because the muscles don’t seem to be functioning. I look at every aspect of my being for one…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten seconds and then… something begins to change. My upper lip begins to lift and then the corners. I can’t control it. It’s as natural and automatic as my heartbeat. The change is complete and I study myself again. I’ve never seen this look before, not like this.

It’s that stupid grin again. It’s bright and voluminous and my teeth start popping out. My eyes start welling up a little with tears of joy. I’m just so happy, oh so happy.

We all wish we could be as happy as I am now all the time. I no longer wish that because I know if we felt like this all the time it wouldn’t be as special, heartfelt, inspirational or as liberating as it is.

So the next time you’re bored and looking for something to do, go on Omegle, or for a walk. Do something that gets you moving (a.k.a. not watching television or playing video games). You’ll be looking at the ground and pacing and you just, you just might, run into something special or have something special thrown upon you.

So…what’s your story?