A New Phase

Well, it's official - I am a full time student again. I have successfully made it to 25 years old without having a "real" job and have taken another step in the direction of turning a passion into a career.

While graduate school does bring to mind onerous research papers and late nights downing cafe lattes in order to finish the text for tomorrow's class discussion, let's remember that if you love what you do (or study), it's a glorious burden. I've also not lost sight of the reality of entering the workforce - long hours, grunt work, minimal responsibilities, computer screen glaze-over . . . doing what you don't want to do in order to do what you really want to do is a reality of every career field. I am queen of the means to an end. I have had several mundane, lowly jobs (gas station attendant, office cleaning lady) to get where I wanted to go (Western Europe, Argentina, Washington D.C.).

Which is why I am going to try to love every minute of the next years, even the mental break downs associated with three research papers due in a week's span. I have always said that I want to be consumed by my passion. I want to think and discuss and read about international development so much that my head aches. I want to be surrounded by people who view the world and our role in it the same way as I do. I want to discover different countries, cultures, livelihoods, languages and new problems and all of their potential solutions.

And I never want to forget the reason why I got into this field. It's a field with an impossible goal. Free the world from poverty, ignorance, disease, starvation, slavery, corruption and war. Problems, problems, problems. I love problems.

So today, on the first day of classes, I am thinking of the incredible journey I've had in getting to this point, the mystery of what lies ahead, and . . . Freddy. Freddy was the first severely malnourished child I came across in Nicaragua. The child whose state of being made me feel hopelessly impotent but determined to never forget that there is more need out there than can be taken care of.

I am absolutely small and, yes, quite impotent in the face of the world's problems, but I can't imagine spending life any other way than trying.

The Life of Comfort

After reading the blog of a kindred spirit and phenomenal woman, and thinking on the topic of comfort for weeks now, I decided to finally get it out of my mind and on . . . paper. . . this screen, that is.

As I watch many of my friends happily settle in to the life of comfort, I find myself wondering why it is that I find this type of life so unattractive. I mean, let's face it, life would be much easier if all I wanted was a husband to love on, a house to make it in, and kids to carry my love forward long after I am gone. My mom half jokingly laments that I don't have these simple goals. She reminds me that if it were so, she wouldn't have to worry about me in dangerous places or not having an income and all those other stabilities; she could just hop in her air conditioned, cushioned vehicle, drive to the neighboring town, help me raise my children, and grow old with me. We could live in a bubble, happily ever after. I understand the appeal and perhaps could have succumbed to it, but I got a taste of all that could be. Life could be bigger than any adjectives in my vocabulary . . . if I were willing to give up comfort and ease.

I have to help make the world a better place and won't rest until I feel like I've given it all I can. Yes, it's a goal that, in the strictest sense, will end in "failure," because the world will never change. No matter how hard I fight, there will always be poverty, war, death, genocide, corruption, greed, natural disasters and rape. So then, as some people ask, what's the point? Why not just realize the fruitlessness of these goals and live for a family? Raise a family well and live in peace. A life of peace and comfort.

Because the best kind of peace is hard earned. The best kind of peace, the kind that lets your soul finally rest, follows hard, long battles. Comfort can't be appreciated until you've gone so long without it you've forgotten how it feels. Because I feel most alive when I have no idea what awaits me and I have to think on my feet. When every day is a challenge, I constantly grow. I am a permanent child, filled with exuberance for life, in anticipation of what is next because there is always a next. There is always a curve ahead when you push limits. When you welcome, even look forward to struggle, life is one long adventure. Life is learning, continually expanding. Because there is no glorious height like knowing you have accomplished something you previously thought impossible.

Because life is so big, so huge, and now that I know, I can't live just one little shred of it.

Climb a mountain, jump out of a plane, run a marathon, fight a war, bike across the country, sail around the world, sell the clutter in your house and build an orphanage, struggle for a noble cause, turn your creativity into an art or business, turn dreams into reality, do whatever they tell you is impossible . . . and feel the burn of being truly alive. I have my doubts as to whether a life of routine and comfort can make my body and soul ache with so much life.

I once read that there are two types of people in this world. Most people live their life in the gray - life is not really great but it's also not really bad. There aren't any horribly painful moments, but there also aren't any blissfully happy ones. They live on a certain level and never depart from the track. Then there are those who choose to open themselves fully to the bad and the good, to all the depths each direction can take them. They don't shy away from awful pain because they know it will be followed by dizzying heights. They live in black and white.

I opt for the lifestyle that sends ripples through my soul. The closest to God I can feel on earth - whether it's on my knees in pain, or crying from joy. I want to be repeatedly shaken by life. I don't want to have to drink to feel high. I want life's experiences to make me tingle inside.

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.