Writing without purpose is a lot like existing without purpose: both have no direction. Although life can create inadvertent opportunities, feeling-less writing will create a word count, but the words are empty and oftentimes cold. 

Writer’s block is defined as “the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.” However, I’d like to describe it as a tragedy. It’s even more tragic when there’s clearly something running wildly through my head, but I’m unable to form a coherent sentence out of what I’m thinking, let alone write it down.

But, I wonder what the term is for writer’s block in the form of life. Life block? Whatever it’s called, it could be defined as “the condition where I have no clue where my life is going, or how to proceed with it at all.” 

I watched “Little Women”, the 2019 adaption, in the old movie theater by the mall with one of my closest friends (still) back when we were in eighth grade. After the movie finished, and the box of cookie dough bites was scraped dry, we both decided that we hated Amy March. 

In fact, we dedicated almost our entire personalities for a month after watching the movie to hating everything about Amy March. We hated that she burned Jo’s journal, but, most of all, we hated that she got Laurie and Jo didn’t. 

Now, there were a lot of factors that went into the favoritism I personally had for Jo March, but the main reason is because she didn’t have a plan. Although she was smart, she was also careless and outspoken. She was a writer, and she was fiery. And I felt, in that time of my life, she was everything I wanted to be. 

However, just recently, I re-watched the movie, and I realized something: maybe, I am Amy March?

Say this to 13-year-old me, and she’d have a heart attack. But, I think one of the biggest accomplishments I could ever have is actually being able to relate to Amy and being able to accept her flaws as some of my own. 

Amy, as I analyze her, is someone who wants to please everyone around her because it pleases her to be perfect. She was depicted as a character who was supposed to be a villain in comparison to Jo, but all she really wanted was to serve society during that time period. She felt satisfaction subjecting herself to womanhood and all it that was. She was the youngest, and she strived for attention.

But, Amy’s monologue toward the end of the movie is what morphed my new perspective when she said: I want to be great or nothing. 

There is so much depth that comes with saying something as broad as that. The fact she said that as an adult, as an engaged woman, as someone who has already put her ‘idea’ of what’s great in motion. But, that’s what we all have a tendency to do. Create an idea in our heads of what could be great, and live out every moment trying to feel satisfied with the progress. 

It happens to me in everything that I do. I want to be great or nothing, but it’s so frustrating when I’m not the ‘great’ I want to be. And when I find that I am becoming too mediocre, the purpose I once had, the passion I once carried for that thing I’m doing, is gone. The harsh reality of every sport, academic class, extracurricular is that someone will always be doing it better than you. Despite how high the standards you hold for yourself already are, there’s a newfound insecurity that will push those standards to an unhealthy level. 

The fear of what’s to come, especially as a junior, is something I thought people were joking about. The warnings I’ve gotten for years about the ‘terrors’ of junior year all are turning out to be real. It’s the feeling of knowing every move you take now will shape everything that’s to come later, and the thought of making one wrong decision is sickening through that perspective. One last real summer, one last mandatory math class, one last ‘normal’ year of high school—the bitter-sweetness of this year is oftentimes underrated. It’s a year full of spite, spite that you have to come back and do it all over again next year when you’re anticipating the end. With this mindset, it’s easy to get lost within the internal battle of trying to be the greatest at everything in order to succeed. 

Perhaps the joy in finding purpose isn’t actually seeking it out at all. There’s a different set purpose for nearly everything around us, like how a tree’s purpose is to provide us with oxygen, and how a rainstorms’ purpose is to restore moisture within the Earth. As humans, our purposes are unspoken, but there is an instinct we all follow which leads us all down, essentially, the same path. There’s a reason why humans pursue a job they are good at, because its natural to want to gravitate towards the things that bring us ease. Despite if a doctor truly loves the craft, the money pays well, and that doctor might be one of the most talented within their field. Of course they’re going to want to do it. 

However, I still can’t help but think of Amy March and how she threw away everything she believed in to marry Laurie, a man with no money, no plan and no stability. I like to think of Amy as a human version of writer’s block. How she went through the motions of her childhood with such ambition but ended up getting stuck the moment she became an adult. Living her life doing enough to get by, but never anything that meant something to her. Finally, breaking off the engagement to a wealthy man and marrying her childhood friend was what was able to allow her to live again—this time with the same ambition she once had. 

If you’re living for the idea someone else has for the way life is supposed to be lived, you aren’t living at all. These messages can be seen through different platforms, and can easily shove someone into a box and turn daily routines into mundane chores. There’s nothing worse than realizing that you’re secretly dreading participating in the activities you’ve once enjoyed. 

The question still raised is: how do I even get past all this? And, that’s a question I don’t think anybody has the true answer to. Although, I don’t think being stuck in this rut of emptiness can ruin what I have built for myself just yet. Because every moment where I’m not constantly motivated is something bigger than me subtly telling me that I have to slow down. 

And I think: I am great, and I’m turning into something.