I had a conversation today that directly connects to the blog post below.

The maintenance man at my new apartment is a Cameroonian political asylee, meaning he was granted protection in the United States due to an actual experience of or fear of certain religious, political or racial persecution in his home country. He told a friend and me his story of political torture in Cameroon, how he got out, about his family still living there, how he hasn't kissed his wife or children since 2006 when he fled, how he used to be a seaman but is deathly afraid of planes, etc. He showed us his crooked finger, part of the bone still shattered, where they tortured him with pliers. His eyes were sincere, grateful, sad, full of his life story. We asked him if he likes living in the U.S. We wanted to know is he was happy, to which he replied: all I want is a long life with my family. I am grateful for every day of life in which I can live without fear of death.

Do you know where I am going with this? That's all he wanted. Life. Not a certain kind or a certain set-up or a certain number of years or a specific way or path or filled with certain things. He just wanted breath in his lungs, movement in his body, food to eat, a place to feel home, loved ones to endure it with.

My eyes got a little misty at his reply to happiness. It's so simple and grateful. Here I am, counting up all of my "points," calculating my good and bad, getting frustrated when a couple of things are "off" in my life, restlessly striving toward some aim of perfection that I (and my society) have created for myself, and complaining.

Wake. Up. Jessi.

The only hope I have is that I have chosen a career that will continually humble me and remind me of how shallow and petty I can be.

New Year Reflections

In between first year semesters of graduate school, I’ve been able to wind down a bit. The rush is coming again soon, and I’ve taken some time to read humbling books and do a little soul searching and reflection after many months away from a single profound thought on life. I’ve been licking wounds lately, contemplating a disappoint in an area of life that I can’t seem to get right, and probably won’t ever get right due to the career choice I have made.

I’ve been dwelling too much and letting it get me down, and it is time to turn my thoughts around. My favorite line in the movie “Vanilla Sky” is by the character Sofia: “every passing moment is another chance to turn it all around.” We can change our lives by changing the way we perceive our obstacles and our circumstances. It’s a profound decision in a brief moment that can change it all. A good friend recently reminded me that every time she has gone through this type of disappointment, she has been transformed and come out a better person than she was before. Absolutely true in my experience. My mom recently told me “nobody’s life is perfect. Ask around and I’ll bet you see there is one area in everyone’s life that they are not satisfied with.” I look at mine and absolutely everything, EVERYTHING, but one thing, is right. It’s better than right. It’s totally amazing!

So on that train of thought, I got to thinking about the last year in my life and I am blown away by the magic of it. Wouldn’t it be good for all of us to dedicate a chunk of time at the end of every year to reflect on the transformation within us in just a brief year of the many years that life is for most of us? A year is so brief, but so much can happen and change. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone kept track and reminded us, awakening us from our mental and spiritual slumber and lazy state of mind?

About this time one year ago, I was hiking on top of a glacier in southern Argentina with my friend Macala. I hiked a freakin’ glacier! Glorious! It wasn’t even on my list of things to do! I spent New Years in Mendoza, Argentina hiking around the Andes Mountains, contemplating a skydive, and toasting cheap champagne with my traveling buddy, wondering what the next year would teach me.

I applied to graduate school, unsure of the path I was on, starting to doubt whether what I wanted to do with my life was even a legit career. I was humbled, insecure, confused and worried. I saw graduate school as a way to confirm the path I was on. After four months spent analyzing every single line in every single essay, I sent everything off and tucked that dream away. Best not to hope too much.

Back to Missouri, where I stayed for a month while planning a move to DC. Even if I didn’t get grad school, I was going to get somewhere. To DC, where I stayed with a family who would take me in like one of their own, becoming a second family and place to retreat when the city life got to me.

Found a nice paying gig at a restaurant way above my level of sophistication. Not sure why they let me in. I tried to memorize wines, aperitifs, and . . . what the hell are sun chokes and dendi sauce? Still a Missouri girl in some ways.

Got accepted into every graduate school to which I applied; even one of the most highly selective programs, where I was one of 95 candidates. I can still feel that glory. It was the confirmation for which I had been yearning. I hadn’t been wasting my time all these years, traveling to other countries doing volunteer work! Then, I got a scholarship to one of the schools. OH MY GOD. Take my breath away, jump on the bed, cry for joy, kind of happiness. That phone call to my parents was one of the greatest moments in my life.

I reconnected with a friend from my past who was living in DC, who offered me a deal on rent I couldn’t refuse. The story is random, hilarious and what life is made of. We got along so well that a temporary arrangement has become long-term. Hadn’t seen or talked to him in seven years, and now he’s my roommate.

I fell in love. After many years without it, I remembered how amazing it feels to be adored and to adore someone. It was so, so, so good. And then I lost it.

I started graduate school and felt more overwhelmed than I ever have in life. Hello, stress. I made an incredible friend, Jenny, who is like me in so many ways it is frightening – right down to our damn initials. It’s third grade sort of girlie connection. Even our professors confuse us. I found a group of people that perceive the world in the same way that I do. I found camaraderie after many years of searching.

I trained for and ran my first marathon - 26.2!!! - in a time I am proud of: 4:30. I pushed my body through limits it has never crossed, and my body stayed strong during 5 months of wear and tear. I formed an incredible relationship with my body, and decided it deserved restoration for all of its hard work. Enter yoga. I discovered a yoga practice that fulfills me physically and mentally. I found an exercise that restores my inner and outer.

I began studying my third language, turning scribbles into sounds and letters, forming a new connection and respect between me and people from a different part of the world. I studied with cab drivers at 1:00 in the morning on my way home from work. Scribbles to phonetics, strangers to friends, unknown to respect.

I saw New York at Christmas, just like in the movies. I stayed in a high rise in New York with an equally blessed friend of mine from my days in Nicaragua. I reconnected with my Nicaraguan expat friends and strengthened my friendship with each of them.

I welcomed so many new, incredible people into my life. Each on his or her own determined, ambitious, inspirational path in life. Each doing his or her own part to chip away at the coldness and cruelness in the world; each cultivating a skill that will help him or her make the world a better place in a small way. They are soldiers, nurses, intelligence officers, international law students, policy wonks, development wanna-bes or practitioners, and story-tellers and writers.

I found a place to call home, a city that has everything I want right now. I found an apartment in my favorite part of that city, next to the family I love, the new friends in my life, the diversity I crave, and the coffee shops and dive bars I need.

Maybe I lost in love. Maybe the tally marks are beginning to take their toll. Maybe I am tired of pretending I care about how the wine pours into a glass or whether its Sancerre or Chablis or Blau & Blau just for a paycheck. But if those are the only problems I have in a year full of monumental, positive, glorious changes that have brought me a huge amount of happiness and joy . . . a hundred pluses and one minus = still a lot of pluses.

May this blog entry be a motivation for you to do the same for your own year. Take time to reflect on all the magic. Look at the negative too, and find the good that came from it. I bet you still have more pluses than minuses.

How can you make new year resolutions without reflecting on the power of a year in your life?

Just when I thought maybe I was losing the ability to feel strong emotions for anything, happiness or anger or sadness, someone served to show me that I can still be totally overwhelmed by my emotions. At the most inconvenient time. Not sure to take this as a positive reminder or a damning reality.

Ooh life, you are full of ups and downs and so many in-betweens. Always asking me to prove that I can. Always requiring that I push forward and find my inner strength. Sometimes I think it might be nice to give up every now and then, to be weak and let the whole world know it. Crawl to a safe place and stay there. But, that just never seems like a real option. So, here we go. May I amaze myself.

26.2 Miles Further

Wow. One day after running my first marathon and I feel amazing. I feel like I can do anything today. Well, that’s not true. I am unable to stop smiling.

After 5 months of training 3 and 4 times a week; forfeiting my weekend nights in order to be in bed early so I could run 8, 12, 15, 20 miles at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning in 90% humidity with a cruel sun beating down on me and my running partner (or a 2 hour run in the pouring rain – oh yes we did and no it was not liberating); and having to manage this huge commitment around full time graduate school, twenty hour work weeks, and Arabic classes; fighting sore muscles week after week and a strained IT-band; I did it. I ran a freaking marathon!!! And I never walked once!! I never gave up!!

Let’s talk about those last 6 miles. Miles 20 – 22 were hard. We were crossing a seemingly interminable bridge, the elements were whipping us around, and half the runners around me were walking. It was discouraging and it was silent. Everyone had lost energy and the adrenaline was gone. Disappointment was abundant on that bridge. It was every woman for herself now.

Miles 22 – 26 were insane. They were the ultimate test of perseverance. I have never felt such a mix of physical and mental exhaustion and, predominantly, fear of failure. I had missed my supporters on mile 19 and therefore hadn’t had any calories since mile 15 (they had all my Clif bars and gels). I was running on empty and my head was foggy. I felt light-headed and couldn’t concentrate to get back into my running zone. I needed food so desperately that I fought back tears of frustration. At one point, I screamed out for food and a runner threw me some jelly beans. Thanks mystery man. I nearly ate the paper wrapper. No shame.

With my body running on empty, all I had left was head and heart. So, as they say, I dug deep. I spent a mile doubting I could finish the race without walking. Then I spent a half-mile talking myself out of walking, reminding myself that training had shown me that walking is just as painful as running after 20 miles. May as well endure the pain running and get this marathon over with. Finally, I went back to the most important lesson I had taken away from 5 months of marathon training. Progress is painful and pain is progress. Pain is important and can be a positive force in our lives. Pain is a teacher.

So, as one sign read in those last 3 miles read, I “embraced the suck.” When I saw the crowds and heard the cheering at the finish line, I felt a euphoria coming over me. “Holy crap! Here it is! It’s over!” The last 0.2 mile was a hill, but I embraced that too. I sprinted up that damn hill and across the finish line. Where the hell did that energy come from? The human body is incredible.

Everyone told me that I would want to run another marathon after my first one. Had someone said that to me during mile 20-26 or right after finishing, I probably would have replied with some vulgarities. I spent 3 miles cussing my decision to run a “stupid ^%*$%#@” marathon. But today, the morning after, I am thinking it isn’t such a crazy idea. Maybe I will run a marathon again someday. First though, I need to get back to some friendships and other sources of happiness that I’ve neglected for three months.

Undoubtedly, running 26.2 miles was one of the most awesome things I have ever done. I learned so much about my body (mostly that it’s amazing) and even feel quite natural talking to, say, my knee or treating my body like a good friend. Yes, I have a relationship with my body. It has been awfully supportive of my stupid ideas (running 26.2 miles). We are buds.

I also kicked an inhaler habit during my training. Since being diagnosed with asthma at 8 years old, I have strengthened my lung capacity to 90% from running regularly for the last 6 years. Even so, I always used an inhaler before exercise as a result of some scary exercise-induced asthma attacks years ago. When I started running 10 and 12 miles, however, I realized that there was no way the steroids in my lungs were pushing me through the longer mileage. The physical need no longer a possibility, I began to think it was a mental dependency. So I stopped taking it before my runs and carried it instead. After some getting used to and rough starts, I stopped carrying it and decided that I no longer had exercise-induced asthma. The power of mind over matter.

Mostly, though, from marathon training and running as well as the onset of graduate study, I am keeping this pain theme in mind. Pain as progress; progress as painful. Perseverance and determination will get me through anything. I am often overwhelmed, stressed and tired from trying to balance far too many things in my life. I complain too much, throw pity parties, feel lost, get angry with the wrong people, lose patience and forget to have fun or relax. My ambition makes me crazy at times; I am my own worst enemy, for sure. But when I cross a 26.2 finish line, beat an chronic illness, speak in a third language, graduate with a MA – when all the work pays off – it is ALWAYS worth it.

Please forgive my complaining along the way.

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.