Immeasurable Prosperity

What a wonderful summer it has been for me. I'm only working 40 hours a week, sometimes less, and making great money. I have enough downtime to read for hours without end, enjoy the sun's rays, sleep in and fit in long runs 4 times a week. I am definitely living the easy life.

This morning I woke up early to fit in an 8 mile run, stopped by the grocery store on my way home, walked the mile home with my arms full of bags, made a huge breakfast with coffee and juice and sprawled out over the newspaper to read of the world's woes while I rested in comfort. The only "struggle" of my day - running - was one I chose. How wild that I have been born into a life where I get to choose my struggles. One in which I opt and actively seek out degrees of hardship.

In this same morning, I also gave in to looking up round trip tickets to the nearest rough-around-the-edges country where I could escape from the modernity that allots me the former daily routine. Such contradictions. I have the economic freedom to put myself amid lives marred by unchosen, sometimes extremely wretched, struggle for as long as I see fit, get back on the vessel of modernity and return to the relative ease that the industrialized world cushions me in.

Choice. For the most part, I can choose the kind of life I want. Very few other countries in the world offer that to their inhabitants. I choose how to expend my calories, pass my hours, spend my money. As I read the book "Development as Freedom," by Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, I am more convinced that choice is at the heart of development. Choice is what I wish for the people I've met in the hills of Nicaragua, the shanty towns of Ciudad de Juarez, and the slums of Buenos Aires.

I want the little girl from Hilapo Dos whose long silk-like hair, big eyes, coffee skin and bashful smile pulled me out of myself to be able to choose between babies and books. I don't will her to have all the choices I do, for then she would only be confused and overwhelmed, but I want her to know the delight in choosing which path she shall take at life's forks. I want there to be a fork in her road. I want her to discover that not only does she love her boyfriend and native village, but she loves the way she feels after solving a difficult math problem, passing her knowledge on to a class of children, or turning her entreprenuerial ideas into a small business. I want her to feel, however fleeting the moment, that she can shape the small world around her.

When I think about choice as a measure of prosperity rather than GDP, unemployment rates, fiscal deficit or any of the other numbers we have become narrowly focused on, I realize that while times are numerically hard in our country, we are still free. We all still have a choice. Even the begging guy on the corner who has been evicted from his home has a choice. He doesn't have to stand there because there are numerous homeless shelters with a bed and a meal for him. He doesn't have to starve. The single mom with three kids and not enough money to pay the bills isn't without hope. There are non profits everywhere that exist solely to help people like her. Our government even has a system designed to help her. There are jobs that don't require complex skill sets that offer employment. Our economy, no matter how sickly, accomodates everyone.

On the other side of the spectrum, walk into the wrong zone in a war torn country, choose a religion, cross the wrong person in power, unknowingly build your hut over an oil reserve, demand rights, or sometimes just be the unlucky ethnicity at the time . . . and face certain death.

So even when life's choices become heavy, say divorcing a spouse and splitting up a family or spending life less happy than we had hoped, remember, we still have a choice. There are women in this world who would be murdered for that choice.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Twenty-five years in and life is fantastic. So many more plans in my head, but to be morbidly honest, if I died tomorrow, I would die satisfied with the short life I lived.

If you died tomorrow, would you be proud of the way you lived your life? Would you close your eyes with a faint smile of satisfaction? Would there be any hushed regrets, repressed dreams, that you held buried by the years? Would you wish in those last moments that you had done something that you had talked yourself out of because it was too childish, irrational, difficult or odd?

Not me. Perhaps that's a good measure of "success." To die satisfied with the years you've had - many or few.

You know what I love about believing in fate and a higher power? I never know who will end up in my life, for how long, what he or she will contribute, or how many times this person will come in and out of it, but I am sure it's exactly what's meant to be. It could be argued that this kind of irrational trust is a coping mechanism for the unfairness of life's whims, but I find it absolutely magical believing life is working for me, not against me. So when I spend the morning hitting it off with a handsome stranger and part not with a number or a promise or an expectation, but a "well, maybe I'll see you again," I love knowing that, yes, maybe fate should have it that way. Maybe next week, maybe four years from now, but yes, maybe. And if fate shouldn't, I don't want it anyway. Trust.

When I was 19 years old and out of the country for the first time, I felt an intense sense of liberation. My first step out of my comfort zone awakened a part of me I didn't know existed. Something similar to the peace sign emerged on my upper back while in Costa Rica. Not representing world peace - I never fully bought that. It represented inner peace, something worthy of striving for. A profound trust in this life.

Still a long way to go, but I'm getting closer.

Ask anyone who has known me a long time to describe me in one word, I will bet on them saying "intense." It's a label I have been given over and over again. It's one that I never came to accept, until recently.

Intense. Strangers thought it was weird, my boyfriends dumped me because of it, and my friends joked about it - not always in an innocent way. I hated the word. I flinched when I heard the word and my name used in the same sentence. I went on the defense. The fact that I was intense and passionate in a part of the world where most people prefer normal, calm and the comfort of routine was a burden. One that my dear parents and family, my allies, did their best to help carry and nurture.

Now I realize that my intensity has an awesome purpose. I'm intense because I am signing up for a career that is extremely intense. I have an overabundance of energy because I'm going to need it when humanity's flaws and evil tendencies get in the way of good intentions time and time again. Failure is a given in international development and it's going to take a lot of passion to get back out there and try again. If my life turns out the way I have it in my head, I'll be working alonside the military and other federal officials in fairly dangerous places where I'll be riding in armored vehicles and may need a military escort at times. There is a good chance that my career will require bursts of activity and focus followed by rest and return to "normalcy." Intense? Yes. Perfect.

So, as it turns out, my intense personality was the difference between a predictable, average life and one that is full of mystery, excitement, opportunity, fun, ambition and life-changing experiences. A life focused on mortgages, retirement funds, 401ks, the grind for the next 60 years . . . or . . . a bunch of unknowns that whisper of endless possibilities.

If you aren't intense, you can't stand out in the crowd. I don't want to blend in. I don't want an ordinary life. I want an extraordinary one.

"Intense." Why, thank you.

After seeing a dear friend of mine, Stephanie Kleven, twice in two weeks due to her proximity (she lives in Philly), I realize how important this decision to move to D.C. was for my social needs.

God bless Missouri. I'm glad I was raised close to nature, with humble beginnings, solid values, the slow life, and zero materialism. On the other hand, I am a total skeptic of easy questions and simple answers and ends. For some unknown reason, I have always questioned simple conclusions, the average path and conventional reasoning. Curiousity was the death of my content Midwestern spirit and I set out to search for different answers.

Only in my travels did I collide with like-minded questioners. Free spirits on a search for something they couldn't explain. Not content unless they were in discovery. Pushing limits for the thrill of it and not writing anything off as impossible. Searching for something bigger than themselves. These were the people I needed in my life. These were my kindred spirits.

Now they are close. They live in D.C., Philly, New York, Boston. . . for the moment. Until they, too, head off on the next adventure. Chasing dreams, pursuing ambitions, starting non-profits, disappearing on long bike rides for the fun of it, acting on their (calculated) whims, studying what they are passionate about, plotting wild adventures in savage-like countries, pondering cross-country road trips, and, most importantly, never saying never. Never assuming the answer to life fulfillment is as easy as A, B, and C, but positive it's about living out A through Z. Shoving as much life and as many different types of livelihoods into this one life we are given.

I have amazing friends leading extraordinary lives. They never cease to inspire me. I could not even begin to guess where life will take them. Much to my relief.

From the doorstep of my apartment, I have an amazing six mile loop. Within four blocks, I pass Iwo Jima, followed quickly by Arlington Cemetary. Ten minutes in, I am crossing the Potomac and coming up the backside of the Lincoln Memorial. This stretch is gorgeous when the setting sun reflects off of the Potomac. Within 15 minutes of having left my apartment, I am running on the National Mall. No matter how many times a week I run it, I never tire of running up and alongside the Washington Monument at sunset and looking across the reflecting pool to the Lincoln and to my right at the Capitol. It is a rush every time. I love the architecture of all the buildings lining the mall and the power they represent.

Just another reason to love where I'm at.

Thirty-two Flavors and Then Some

Sometimes I’m annoyed by the fact that I’m still 100 percent single – I haven’t had a significant relationship in nearly four years – but, there are those moments when I am glad my romantic adventures haven’t lasted. Sometimes I am glad they are just that – adventures.

As long as I am labeling them adventures, allow me to just make a brief list of the different kinds I would like to have, starting with a photographer. I want to date a man whose passion is capturing beauty and I plan to be the object of his lenses while we date. For a brief moment, or however long our courtship lasts, I want to live out that quiet little girl fantasy of being a supermodel. For a brief moment in my life, I will look amazing in pictures.

Also on the list is an astronomer, or at least a dilettante in the field. We will sit under the stars on summer nights, me peering through his telescope while he teaches me about the far away world. Philosophical questions about human life will pop up and demand our probing for hours.

At the top of the list is my doctor without borders. My little do-gooder who gives up six figures so that he can travel the world healing the sick in the most forgotten corners on the globe. If I don’t get to marry this guy, I need to at least spend many years traveling the world with him. Maybe adopt a baby or two. In the midst of human crises, I’ll dash to grab his medical handbook and look up the disease he is trying to treat. He’ll discretely smile as I mispronounce “meningococcal” and look at him confused when he asks me to pass the bone mallet. When we aren’t working with the local population, we’ll sit out on the verandas surrounding our cabaña, complain about mosquitoes and watch the world pass around us. Maybe we could even land a beach front location in our forgotten part of the world. We won’t have any real estate competition in war-torn countries.

I’ll briefly need to date a lawyer so that he can pick out all of the flaws in my arguments and teach me how to pointedly defend my many opinions. Just trying to outsmart each other will be a fun challenge for a couple of months. Or maybe he will have it in his plans to make it all the way to the White House, in which case it would be better for us to stay together. After all, first ladies do get involved in policy these days. Even if we don’t work out, we'll stay friends and he'll remember that I would make an excellent candidate for Secretary of State.

Yes, I've actually given all of this thought. For the first time in my life, I have everything I want - my own apartment in an exciting city; a scholarship to work on a masters in international development at an excellent graduate school; a foot in the door at the International Rescue Committee; a job that has turned me into a food snob as well as pays the bills; a walk away from Whole Foods; magazine subscriptions to Foreign Policy, Time and Foreign Affairs; and a city full of ambitious people living out their dreams. All that's left to figure out is "with whom."

So until Mr. Pretty Damn Good shows up, I plan to make this dating game fun.