sho“I don’t need a bag,” I blurt out, interrupting the rhythmic beeping of the red scanner and steady conveyor belt motor.

The grocer pauses, ginger root in upturned palm, quizzically surveying the produce and milk carton that litter the checkout station.

“No bag?” Her brows furrow in confusion, bushy diagonals leading from her graying hair to converge at the ripples of wrinkles that ebb and flow across her forehead.

I shake my head and attempt the polite, seemingly patronizing smile that overtired mothers often bestow on their toddling children.

But my assertiveness is most profound in the pyramidal stack of groceries that I bundle into outstretched arms — a precarious embrace not just of produce but also of an everyday conscientiousness with which none other than the collegiate opportune has imbued even the slightest of encounters.

With the obligatory, “Have a nice day,” I stride through the automatic double doors — one small step for the profitability of the local market, one “giant” step for Ella and conservationism.

This year has been a peacock-like aggrandizement of importance, a flaunting of the iridescent plumes of independence whereby every action is imparted with a sense of momentousness, and everything is a window for change, no matter how slight. This year is routine and simultaneous lack thereof, schedules shattered by the spontaneity of great ideas, of hedonistic cravings. It’s a sense of being able to taste the saltiness of the world’s tears better than the rest, a notion of purpose that is exalted on a lofty pillow, basking in its perceived unattainability. It’s the 21st-century rock n’ roll, albeit characterized by a ceaseless productivity and yearning for notoriety — for the vibrancy of the avant-garde that earns the glint of the badge of distinction. It’s the terror of homogeneity, a hunger for differentiation that the most minute of actions “might” achieve. Every moment is weighted by importance, and so we stand in this semi-permanent state, arms outstretched on the stern of this life’s vessel that carries us, always tipping either one way or the other into the ranks of non-renewable grocery bag abusers or environmental patrons.

But where are we sailing? Where from?

My aging grandmother, burdened by the onslaught of temporality, approaches me in peaceful offering, asking if I’d like her old mink coat — a desperate attempt to sail along my same wavelength and meek retreat upon noticing the volatility of the waters I chart. I couldn’t respond; internally I scoffed at the offer’s materiality, appreciative of the gesture’s kindness but bestowing it with a sense of disposability nonetheless. I insensitively suggested that she pawn it, strong-willed in that the money could be more prudently used toward some charitable end.  

Yesterday I found out that the coat I so flippantly suggested my grandmother trade was one of the only luxury items she had afforded herself — the first item to make her feel beautiful and accomplished. For the first time in the eight hamster-wheel-like weeks of my sophomore year, my firecracker-like sense of utilitarian correctness fizzled out. My grandmother’s eyes return to me now, glazed with sadness and an inability to recognize she — not truly me — who was one so perceptive of meaning in life’s corners and crevices, who once didn’t shackle everything to the weights of “larger purpose.”

I’ve been so intoxicated with independence and the fortuitous change to create an impactful extension of myself that I’ve become oblivious to the myriad manners in which people share themselves. Self-extensions can be as intimate as they can be far-reaching. Scope is irreconcilable with magnitude. A simple exchange can be earth-shattering in a manner distinct from, but not necessarily lesser than, an earning of worldly renown.

This year is rife with change, brimming with opportunity, bubbling with hopeful fantasy… But the need to bite into every apple with a self-satisfying crunch is largely compensatory — a mechanism of grappling with the persistent churning forward into the uncharted depths of the ether, the unknown independence electrifying but the solitude oft-alienating.

And so, like the boats that ferrymen used to pull across the river using a rope that spanned the water’s width, I cruise along these waves of self-definition and serendipity with the reminder that I am intrinsically connected to earthly harbors of family, friends and faith that ground me whenever the tsunami of opportunity threatens to weather the ship. Institutional religion may be redefined into a more personalized philosophy, familial ties are often subject to the strain comparable to that achieved by over-extended reunions, and some friendships feel volcanic in their cycles of intensity and dormancy, but I still feel that, as I pick up the soggy and frayed rope from the river’s depths, I can reign my boat in to shore and comfortably anchor to something exceeding the grandeur of my plans. The path ashore might be as undefined as the outbound journey — one may not even know to what one is returning — but the regimented pulling of the rope towards some stable force that can handle the weightiness of my ship’s cargo laden with dreams, expectations, successes, disappointments and failures is humbling nonetheless. My ship will not sink amidst the whimsicality of the waters that I sail; I am not a lone cartographer; I can be Ella Eisinger, grocery bag hero, while realizing that every moment need not be capitalized upon as a means to an end; I can twirl around in my grandmother’s fur coat and watch her eyes sparkle in youthful reminiscence, temporarily putting social rebukes of materialism aside to impart joy in a lesser expected way.

This year is radically opportunistic independence, but it’s also interdependence. It’s everyday conscientiousness packed with consciousness, the limitlessness of flight coupled with the humility to sometimes return to the nest of values held near and dear, forces to which the rope will always lead. It’s fire and water — each in check of the other — and a harmonious balance between the auspiciousness that plows and the character-crafting that trails.