Self-reflection in a lazy river

Graduation. Supposedly some life-changing event. Some recognizable feat. Something to be congratulated. Something to give you that added significance to your life and your title. Why yes, I am a Bachelor of Science. At some point within the next decade of my life I’ll be a Master or a Doctor. Fancy. In truth, nothing will really change in my life except the titles. I’ll go from single-student-part-time office assistant-researcher-TA to single-unemployed-college graduate. Excuse me, single-unemployed-Bachelor of Science.

Graduating should be exciting right? I mean this is the sitcom period of life: going to clubs, dating tons of people, having a job that’s rarely portrayed on screen and goofing off the rest of the time, hanging out with strange but somehow loveable friends in some big city… all conveniently set at prime time getting the viewership of 20-30 year olds in “similar” situations… except by similar I mean quite a bit less hilarious, with little to no satisfying wrap-ups after a half hour conflict, and the added bonus of the sorrow, loneliness, and pain of real life. I mean I often find my life hilarious and fun, in an unscripted, sarcastic, exaggerated, audacious, and reckless sort of way. But it's a lot more than that. Not usually like a sitcom.

Anyway, I’ll still be in Provo, the place I was planning on leaving as soon as I could. I’ll still be in student housing, which I also planned on leaving ASAP. I’ll still be car-less, though I’m coming to the realization more and more that a bike simply won’t cut it for real employment so that will have to change. (Sorry, William. You are the most wonderful and reliable of my possessions and I’m still amazed that your non-professional grade frame has taken me hundreds of miles). People I love are still leaving. I’ll still have the same problems and worries and misunderstandings and far-off hopes that may never come to fruition. To me, graduation has been a long, drawn out settling in of disillusionment.

I meet people who have these plans and have been places, traveled the world, done things and I wonder, why isn’t that me? Why didn’t I do that? Why don’t I do that right now? I mean I’m graduating… I can do that stuff now, right? I’ve scrambled through the memories of the last few years of my life, desperately looking for something I must have missed. I mean I had plans and options before… Peace Corps, move to LA, Teach for America, etc etc etc. There was supposed to be a clear SOMETHING to do after school I thought… I mean what was the point of all that? To get a piece of paper? To get a job? To what? Did I not do something right? The only clear place I know I’ve royally screwed up and missed things is in my relationships, romantic and otherwise. That in itself has been the biggest and most influential trial I’ve been through my whole life really. But even in that realization and working hard to mend things that have been broken, I’ve found little solace. That journey at least I know is bigger and meant to fill my whole life, unlike the others meant for these few years. So where am I supposed to go?

No matter how many times I learn or realize that life is never about the outcome, I somehow always get sucked into that way of thinking. I mean I’ve been rearing at the reigns this whole time to go do something with my life and now that I’m free, nothing. I feel no pull or purpose. It's like I need something to fight or to push me in my life. The beautiful thing about school for me was working relentlessly towards a goal and loving the challenge and the things I learned. But now I’m at the end. I’m at the completion of this journey and I feel utterly lost, burnt out, and strangely stuck. The plans I make and the things I want are falling through. I’ve been desperately holding on to potential hopes and reasons for me to be here, when I should be letting go. I’m not good at letting go. It feels wrong and illogical. And so the process of disentangling me from my ideals and letting them float away has become what feels like cutting off life vests and buoys to save myself from drowning. Not seemingly practical or advisable.

The funny thing is, when really looking at the big picture, I think I’m trying to save myself from drowning in a 3 foot deep lazy river. Probably the only reason I’m not moving is because I’ve completely entrapped myself with the inner tubers and floaties of my ideals so as not to die. In consequence I have created an plastic, air-filled blockage in the vascular theme park ride that is my life. Some hypothetical life guards are probably at this moment telling me that only one inner tube is allowed per guest in the lazy river due to safety reasons. In addition, I also have this wonderful disposition where everything in life is part of some deep, existential essence and thus any ephemeral crisis is a meaningful and agonizing death. Though the richness of success is also fully experienced and profoundly beautiful, the somewhat ridiculousness of the way I feel things is always at the back of my mind. It’s not that what I feel is wrong, it’s just not lighthearted by any means. I’m pretty sure studies have suggested that this kind of feeling leads to increased risks of heart attacks and other such things that I really have no clue about. Heart attack from fighting everything has been added to the list of likely ways I will die (right after skin cancer and before reckless endangerment).

Others have learned the art of living freely, without fighting, and I guess, really, that’s what I’m probably supposed to get out of this. That nothing is ever really in my hands, yet it all is. It’s mine to act WITH but not ON. It’s mine to be with but not mine to control. I think that might be freedom. Finding the balance of accepting the world for what it is and relinquishing my ever-futile hold on it, while existing purposefully and honestly. Because, though there is a potential of really getting hurt and dying and tons of horrible things happening, those things are going to happen whether or not I'm desperately trying to control them. I'm too busy trying to not drown that I forget I can swim.

Now to find a job I suppose. That’s what single-unemployed-Bachelors of Science adults do, right?

Life isn't fair

Life isn’t fair.

I remember my dad saying this to me in the middle of a fight. I don’t remember what we were fighting about, I just remember screaming “it’s not fair!” thinking maybe if I said it loud enough, whoever was in control of such things would magically make it fair.  At my father’s retort, I cleverly suggested “well shouldn’t we be trying to make it as fair as possible?”

My answer is no, 15 year old Liz. Sorry I betrayed you.

I’ve always considered myself a hard worker. If I want something, I will put everything I have on the line for it. I believe in a good, honest day’s work. I believe in working for what I want. At first glance, it seems I hold the traditional American values: work hard and climb to top, because, by golly, if you work hard, you deserve the top, you will achieve your dreams, and you will be successful. But I think this mindset is precisely the problem. The problem with capitalism, socialism, and all the other isms you can think of. The problem with our generation. The problem with me.

Working hard isn’t the problem. Doing what you want isn’t the problem. The problem is the step taken after. The idea that after all the hard work, the world owes me.  I deserve the outcome that I’ve worked for. Hard work becomes a means to an end. I will get A’s in all my classes to get a degree to get a job to go to grad school to get a PhD to publish papers to… I will do whatever it takes to get what I want because it’s the end result that matters, not the in-between.

But what happens when the outcome isn’t delivered? When, even after all the hard work and the grade-A effort, you fail. What if after putting it all on the line, the result isn’t what you intended. Truth be told, this happens the all the time. People fail. I fail. People fail me. The system fails me. It all together doesn’t work, despite my best efforts. The world still owes me, damn it! I don’t deserve this result! Where is what I’m looking for and where are you, God?

Here are some common themes in the answers that run through my head:

“Just trying a couple times isn’t going to cut it, you need to persevere! It’ll come eventually”

“God knows best. It just isn’t time for you to get what you want yet”

“You must have done something wrong. The system works, you just don’t work correctly in it”

“Outcome X probably isn’t good for you anyway. It’s not your fate. Your failure is a sign.”

The replies are plenty, but they never really cut at the heart of reality. The fact of the matter is, the outcome was NEVER the point. Because the truth, at least the truth as I’ve come to realize, is that all the important things in life can never be earned. They have to be given.

Because how, ever, could I earn my life? How could I ever earn someone’s love? How could I ever earn the feeling of someone wrapping their arms around me? How can new parents earn the feeling of holding a newborn child? How could any of us earn forgiveness, especially after terribly hurting someone? How can we earn those moments that stick with us because they’re simply too big to forget? They all have to be given. There is no system, or formula, or rule book, or whatever, for these things, no matter how hard we try to reduce it.

For the entitled, the “given” is an easy escape from trying. Because if it doesn’t matter what work I do or don’t if I’m given everything, why should I work? To them I say the same thing: the point is NEVER the outcome. The point was never to “get”, whether or not you work for it.

The point is to be. Here and now, regardless of what happens tomorrow, we are alive. And while receiving those important things - those things we want so badly - is completely out of our hands, we have every opportunity to put them in someone else’s. We have the opportunity to give to someone else. Working hard does not have to be some cost-benefit analysis focused on the end result. Instead, it can be an expression of love. Because that work means something. Because it is something you believe in. Because that work signifies that even though the result may not be the desired, you were genuine in your effort. It is an expression of love for all that has been given you.

Has it not been said “…Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?...For [it is known] that ye have need of all these things… take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself”. Applied here, regardless of tomorrow, we can live today. We are more than the things we want or even what we need.

So, no. Life isn’t fair. It wasn’t ever meant to be.