I'm about two-thirds of the way through Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and one of its main themes is striking a particularly relevant chord with me right now: the separation of the self into two opposite sides, particularly in the book's case, soul and body, light and dark, light and heavy. I feel this separation. I've always felt it and this book (and translation) puts it into words beautifully.

This separation into poles seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon in our world and respective lives here. Recently, I am experiencing it violently in the form of my continued quarter-life crisis , as it has manifested itself into two distinct and separate destinies or roads for my life, both of which seem equally plausible, each having its benefits and drawbacks. The solution would be simple if there were any way to compromise the two, taking a page out of Diamond Rio's book and meet in the middle; this however, is an intrinsic impossibility as each option is completely exclusive of the other---they are polar opposites in every sense of the word and choosing one necessarily and absolutely means denying the other.

This is the same thing I've been writing about for months and, frankly, I'm a bit tired of the subject. But it keeps resurfacing in different ways, manifesting itself through any and every stimulus available, and this is the way I think best. It's a way of focusing energy into one sentence or word at a time, a way of escaping the constant onslaught of the rampant and raging rapids of the mind that continuously beat upon the shores of thought and demand to be reckoned with but offer no starting point. Writing is the magnifying glass to the powerful and unconentrated radiation of the sun of  my inner consciousness.

Here's my dilemma, in case you missed it the first 9,438 times I wrote about it, in the words of The Clash: should I stay or should I go?

There's nothing here. That is the sentiment of everyone from here, everyone who understands, everyone who knows. This place has nothing for me. But that's not true. Not at all. Not even close. What it lacks in opportunity it more than makes up for in sentimentality, familial loyalty, and blue-collar pride.

I am proud of the work of my father and the men like him that I grew up knowing, with rough hands, bad backs, and weary souls. I am proud of the working mothers who broke the mold not because of an inner drive to fulfill a desire outside of the home, but out of necessity.

I am proud of the brick home that stands empty on three acres of beautiful land in the middle of Kibler Road that my grandfather built with his bare hands to house his family. What will become of that house? Every day that I am here, there is a sliver of hope that someday I will again make that house a home, keeping it in the family and giving it the hard work and care that it requires and deserves. If I leave---when I leave---as planned, I will be turning my back on that house. Will I be turning my back on my grandfather's hard work with it?

I like it when the mechanic recognizes me from my name. I like being my grandfather's grandson. What of the legacies they've left behind? Who will carry them on? Does anyone in Tennessee know of the Seyberts? The Bushes? The Wellmans? The Kennedys? Perhaps at some distance or some incredible matter of chance and intertwining lives, but certainly not to the extent that they are known in this dried and shriveled area of what was America's heartland.

And what of occupation? My father would kill me for saying this, but a large part of me desires to seek training in some sort of skilled labor, join a union, and pay my dues---to scrape by with just enough to be comfortable but never enough to rest like we always did. There's something to be said for that. I like the way I turned out for it. What is more satisfying than falling asleep as soon as you hit the pillow because you are truly physically exhausted? (I'm sure it's not so romantic when you've been doing it for thirty years and your bones ache worse each morning and Mondays look more and more like the face of Death himself .) I say my dad would kill me for thinking this way because the very reason he's been working so hard, at least one of them, is what I'm rejecting here. He's worked hard and run his body into the ground so that I wouldn't have to, just as his father did and his grandfater before him. But if each generation works a little less hard than did the previous one, at some point the value of actual work will be lost. Would I value physical labor if I did not know it so personally? Would I realize the sacrifice had I not seen it every day in my own home? Would it not be, in some way, a living tribute to work just as hard and attempt to pass on this ethic to future generations? I personally believe our country would not be in this mess or anything close to it if more sons worked like their fathers---not necessarily the same occupation, but with the same ethic. The ration of white and blue collar workers has changed drastically, and perhaps there's nothing that could have been done to prevent it, such is the natural order of things. But there's no reason someone couldn't take a blue-collar ethic and values into a desk job.

And I may have just answered my own question.