I have the privileged of hanging out with Middle and High School students each week. It is a great experience because they keep me honest about how cool I really am (what exactly is Vine?) and somehow always confuse me for a student in their ranks (yay for adult acne!)
Last week, I was talking with a Junior student who was sharing about how she wasn’t sure how to prepare for next year. The beautiful and terrifying last year of High School. Upon completing this sacred American rite of passage, students are deemed adults. Our culture, and very often the students themselves, expect a stroll across a stage to suddenly cement their identity and the path for the rest of their lives.
I found myself asking questions about what she wanted to after High School and what career she wanted to pursue. When I started to ask why, she started throwing out words like “prove myself” and “start a career”. As we talked, I asked if the career choices she was intending to make would be things she would really enjoy. If she had taken time to consider what she really wants to do. She wavered momentarily, “No, I would really like to do…”.
Inside, I smiled the painful smile of recognition. Of burying deep down what you want to do for what you should do, for making plans on having to carve out a space which claims “This is me and I have value!” I recognize the desperate need to have a plan, to have it all together and sorted out. Life, however, laughs at our plans. No matter how much space I tried to carve out; a volunteer position, an art studio, a foreign city, it was never enough to prove my worth to the world. How many times did my plans change because I thought, “If I accomplish this-or I go over there-THEN they will love me.” How many times has realty taken a swing through my carefully notated and graphed plans? How different is my life from what I thought it would be when I graduated? The answer to these questions is a million, more than I like to count, and drastically, respectively.
I am so thankful for it, too.
As I have fought the good fight of learning to love myself, to like the quirky, flawed, and loud mouthed introvert that I am, I have learned that there are some deep and essential things which will always stay the same. I will always devour a good story in as little time as possible. I will always want to sing, dance, tell stories, and look for the connections in unexpected places. I will never be a very good judge of character. And at every party, you will always find me with food in my mouth so I don’t have to talk to strangers. Unless there is dancing, ’cause then I will be shaking my booty.
So how do we meld together the constantly changing circumstances and roles we find ourselves in with the core pieces of who we are? This is the thought that dawned on me last week: we are all kaleidoscopes. We all have bits of color, glass shapes, beads or bobbles which are our core. However, as we go through life, these core pieces are constantly moving. The light is always filtering through them in new ways. The pieces make up new designs, they adapt to change and movement. In this way, we are continuous and continuously changing at the same time.
As I finished my conversation, I was glad to know that, most likely, this students life is not going to end at all how she thinks it will. If she can discover her core pieces and appreciate the changes of pace, it will be better. So here’s to the next design.
Continuing the adventure,
Jess
Jess Boctor 