true inspiration

Inception was one of those movies that kept me smiling almost the entire time.
Not because it was particularly well made. I have a few peeves with the plot, relating mostly to how none of it actually made sense to me and how they couldn't bother to do math for us (if 5 minutes is an hour then 10 hours gets you 5 days > 2 months > a little less than 2 years).

But i was smiling more because of how relateable it is.

Now i really have no idea if the rest of you ever feel this way but i have a disturbingly loose grip on reality.

I, every day in my life, feel like I'm lost.
Not lost in a dream. Not lost on a road, but lost in general.
Not lost in a particularly bad sense. Just like I have no idea where I am.
Usually when i have "work" to do to keep me busy, this is not an issue.
But by golly, an almost 3 hour movie is a great place to think.

Here's one way that I often feel lost: My memory, for the most part, only works when other people are talking about things that happened to me.
It doesn't take much for me to stand back and wonder how I got "here".
I can look around and recognize where I am, and I can know where I've been, but sometimes none of it has any meaning.

This has happened to me on almost every math test I've ever taken:
I look at the page, see some numbers and some funny symbols, and have no idea what to do with it. Like, I probably know how to solve a first order linear differential equation. But it takes quite a bit of effort for me to make sense of what the heck that writing on the paper means. Lost. Very lost.

Another subject that the movie vamped on a bit was Inspiration.
Like, what does it actually take to create an original idea?
They mentioned always knowing when someone else thought of something.
They also covered that feeling you get when you're not actually creating, but "discovering". You know, that musician-architect-designer feeling where the piece reveals itself. It is so incredibly sketchy to me, but i absolutely know the feeling.

That, to me, hits at the very core of what it means to be alive.
A biologist will tell us that in a way, we're not all that different from a tree. We're related- we're both "alive", and made up of the same general materials.
But a tree can't create.
Is creation even possible?
If we don't have souls, then we're just biological engines, reacting to our surroundings, responding to inputs. How can a universe-wide chemical reaction make anything new? Let alone ideas?

I wrestle with the concept that the moment you just spent reading what i am right now writing is GONE. FOREVER.
Yes, you have a memory of it. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to look at words on a screen and connect them to the language that gives them meaning. But the actual moment, the infinitely small piece of reality, is gone forever.
And that's why I struggle with the knowledge that every day, literally millions of hours of reality in America get used up watching tv. yelling at children. yelling at parents. Checking facebook. Picking at zits.
LIKE HELLO, THOSE MOMENTS ARE GONE FOREVER, WE COULD HAVE USED THEM BETTER.

Growing up, i've always had this unshakable notion that i could be anything that i want to be. This is difficult for me because i really do want to be and do everything. I want to be rich, I want to develop world-changing innovations, I want to drive a UPS truck, I want to be the CEO of general motors, I want to be an engineer, I want to be a toshiba authorized service person, I want to work on an oil platform, I want to be in the navy, I want to be a researcher, I want to be an IT guy, I want to get a degree from Yale, I want to work at a church. the list really does go on and on.
And I don't want to have to choose.

And so I'm lost. I don't understand how people get stuck with careers that bring them no joy. I don't even understand how people can pick careers.

This is not a dream that we can realize and wake up from. It is very, very real.

I forgot, i was originally going to write about inspiration.
I think I need a kick.