Cadence

Figuring out where you belong is an odd thing. 

We live in a world where many people can see outside of their hometown with ease. We know that there is an entire globe of new places out there, beyond the city limits of the place you grew up. So for people who don’t want to stay in the place where they started their life, they know that there are options. There are other places to be. You just have to get there, through varying degrees of difficulty.

Many of us go through school finding friends at our school or in our neighborhood or on our sports teams or any other of the dozens of extracurriculars we try throughout our life. We find a group in high school (or we don’t) of friends who have similar interests to us. Sometimes we keep those through college. Sometimes we reinvent ourselves. Sometimes we find friends at work or… I don’t know how you meet people if it’s not through an activity, actually. 

But how do you know what your interests are and how to do you serve those interests as they change? You are constantly becoming the person you will be and I wouldn’t want to go back to anyone I was in the past. I’ve come far. I’m happy with myself as I am right now. The changes haven’t been dramatic, but now that I know who I am, how do I know where to be? 

Do you listen to your gut, which is influenced by how much you ate that day and how you’re feeling that week and how much sunshine you’ve seen recently? Do you listen to your brain, knowing that the logical choice may not be the choice that makes you happiest? Do you pursue happiness? When do you take momentary sadness for the greater good, for your greater good? I pride myself on practicality, but I know that my practicality is cushioned by my feelings, my hopes, and my dreams. 

Amelia Earhart once said, “The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward.” But this was said to be heard by the people who have the privilege of following their dreams, who have the luxury of time and education and the feeding of their desires. I do feel as if I can do anything I decide to do. So how do I decide what to do? 

I don’t want to limit myself, to disavow myself of a privilege because others don’t have it. I’d rather use my privilege to help build a world where everyone has that privilege, where everyone has a chance to do anything they decide to do. But those are just words and I don’t know how to shape those words into actions. I don’t know how to turn anything I’d want to do into something that actively improves the world and the situations of the people in it. And I can’t settle, I can’t decide where to be until I know that I’m helping. I am restless with the guilt of my station. 

I know what I’m doing next. I know where I’m going. I’m confident in that. I will pursue a degree with tenacity, and after that jobs, and after that, a career that is helpful, but I feel the need to pause, to take a rest, before I dive in. I need this beat to view the course. Is this what I want? Is this what I should be doing? Why? 

I wish there was a process for this, a checklist that I could run down and answer with honesty and clarity, that will point out my blindspots and assuage my doubts. I want to know what I don’t know and I want to address those things. But it’s just life. This is how we do things. This is how we carry forward. And I can only hope that at the end of this road, I will find a settled place, somewhere I know I can belong.