I don't envy Dante for going through his mid-life crisis in 14th century Italy. Carrying the weight of depression, regret, and doubt before the invention of motorcycles, hair restoration, and dating services sounds like Hell on earth. The poor guy's true love died, and he'd only ever seen her twice. His political party had lost power, and his wife nagged him nightly about leaving the chamber pot lid up. A modern poet would have taken to the bottle, but whiskey hadn't hit the shelves in Italy just yet. Instead, Dante put pen to parchment and scrawled out one of the greatest poetry epics known to man, The Divine Comedy. His cantos cast his enemies into hell, placed his beloved Beatrice in heaven, gave him Virgil as a spiritual guide, and secured his place in history as il Somma Poeta.

Admittedly, I have no experience on which to base my feelings on Dante's situation. I'm a seventeen year old kid cracking jokes about people of an age more than twice my own. In some way, I am in no position to muse about the pains of growing old, but I have wandered through dark woods of my own. I suppose I'm lost in some right now. 

Each night when my head hits the pillow I sigh, and reflect, and many nights I reach the same conclusions: I am happy, but not fulfilled. I am busy, but not productive. I care deeply, but do not act. I can't decide whether I'm waiting for things to fix themselves, or for Cormac McCarthy to float through my window and show me the right road (preferably not the one he wrote about). The only thing I'm certain of is that the latter won't happen. And it shouldn't. I'm not alone in these woods. Though the brush and bramble may block my view, I know that there are others, and that many deserve their guide's attention more.