On Returning to a PhD

Once I was white-water rafting in Colorado; our river guide was this portly, jovial fellow with a magnificent, mountain-man beard.  When we passed a small cave, he joked, "And that's where river guides sleep in the off-season!" 

That's when it hit me: this man will win every single High School Reunion.  Serious, think about it, how do you top white-water-rafting-guide in Colorado?!  Imagine the exchange:

Reunion Attendee #1: "Ah, so what have you been up to since graduation?  I'm already a highly-paid lawyer/doctor/entrepreneur/executive!"

Reunion Attendee #2: "Oh, really? That's cool man, congrats!  I'm a white-water-rafting-guide in Colorado."

Reunion Attendee #1 (wincing): "Son of a..."

I had a classmate in grad school who worked at REI, who told me once that REI is constantly flooded with resumes from lawyers, accountants, ad-execs, etc, that is, unambiguously "successful" people willing to take the cut in hours, pay, prestige and upward mobility, all in order to live life not for the future but for the present, to approach this wondrous world not for what it can do for them, but for what it is.

More seriously, I had a buddy in High School whom I sadly lost touch with, who after college went straight-up Into the Wild up in Alaska, and at 26 they found his canoe but not his body.  Among his closer friends, there was sadness, yes, but also rejoicing, for they'd known someone who hadn't constantly deferred his life, who hadn't submitted to an empty existence of hoop-jumping, but had lived it in the now, more fully in his brief life than many do in a long one.

And now, on the eve of my return to Grad School, I ask myself: am I living my life in the present?  Am I not following into the endless rut of hoop-jumping?  Am I not just deferring my life?  What are my motivations for getting a PhD: for what it'll get me, or for the life I'll encounter?

In the mean time, I keep that Colorado white-water-rafting-guide front and center in my mind.