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2002-10-28 The Desire is Still Sometimes There I just finished watching "Murder by Numbers", starring Sandra Bullock and Ben Chaplin. Despite my parents' unfavorable review of the film when they watched it on Saturday, I quite enjoyed it. But then again, it was mostly about profiling and forensics. Sometimes, when I watch films like that, the old desire becomes rekindled in me. Suddenly I wonder if I made the right decision in choosing not becoming a profiler/homicide detective. A lot of people don't understand that. David never understood it. I tried to explain it, but how do you explain to someone why you want to look at bodies and construct a profile? Hell, I can't even explain it to myself. It seems like a psychotic job. But there must be reasons - otherwise, there wouldn't be so many people striving to become detectives. They wouldn't need to put difficult math courses in the list of requirements just to get into the academy. Have I ever mentioned how I've always wanted to date a cop? Heh. I think it'd be a vicarious experience for me. But it would probably never work out. There'd be too many heated arguments about how he wouldn't be allowed to show me the photos or the evidence, despite my constant nagging. No. I can't explain it. It's just a feeling, an emotion, a drive. How do you explain any strong passion? Can I properly explain why I love to write? No. Sure, I can say it's because I get to create worlds and people that don't necessarily exist until I bring them into existence, but that doesn't seem like an adequate explanation. It's just a drive and a passion. Same with the whole profiling bit. When that sniper asshole - or, correction, assholes - was going around the Washington DC area and outlying areas, I wanted to know EVERYTHING. The evidence. Things left behind. To see the places the people were shot. When shit like that happens, one side of me is horrified (definitely too weak a word). But the other side... the other side wants to know more. Wants to wade in a lake of bagged evidence, making lists, making connections, putting little red dots or flags on huge maps to indicate where the murders took place. Come up with a profile. It's a little like magic, profiling. You look at the crime scene, and after you've looked hard enough, you can figure out the personality of the perp, the type of house and region he'd live in, the type of car he'd drive (even, sometimes, down to its color). On the one hand, I know I made the right decision. I'm fairly prone to anxiety, and so I don't know if I would've been able to handle it. Then again, maybe it would've made me deal with it better. Who knows. It's just that with a degree in religion, I won't go anywhere unless I wake up one day and suddenly want to teach, which is highly doubtful. Or if I win the lottery and can therefore fund my own research. I don't know. Sometimes, despite my love of religions, I think I made a big mistake. I'll have been at university for 4 years when this year is done, and what will I have to show for it? A paper certificate in a frame to hang on my wall, so I can say to people, "Look, I went to university, I studied hard, I had a pretty good CGPA. And now I'm off to work to do reception". I can hope that when I actually have time to sit down and write on a daily basis and send something in to a publishing house that some guy there will look at it and be wowed and will publish it. I can hope that I'll be popular enough to do that for a living. But what if it doesn't work out? What if I write and write and write, and keep my day job doing whatever I can, and it never gets off the ground? At least if I'd kept with the original plan, that of being a profiler, I would've been going somewhere. Anyway. This is normal. Profiling was the first career choice, aside from writing, that I really wanted to do. And I didn't decide not to do it because I suddenly didn't like it or because I realized I'd romanticized it too much. I just decided I didn't want to live in a gated community, I didn't want to take the chance of being paranoid. It's normal for me, once in awhile, to wonder what could've been. To remember the reactions of people when they heard what I wanted to do when I was done school. It was a look of awe, of interest, of (yes) shock. Now it's a frown, followed by a question, "Well what are you going to do with a degree in World Religions?" I have no idea. |
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