My life has been pretty typical in the last week: waking up early most mornings, going to the gym, followed by volunteering or going to school for homework or classes. While my schedule has been typical, I have had an epiphany of sorts-a breakthrough, a revelation, a renewed perspective of the world and what it is that I want out of life.
It all started at the movies. Eat Pray Love was a phenomenal movie that spoke to me in so many ways it was eerie. The entire movie, Olivia looked over at me and said, "Stephanie, that is so you." She was right! Julia Robert's mid life crisis mirrored my quarter life crisis. For her, it was a marriage she needed to escape, and although I have never been married, ending a very long and very toxic relationship was the first of many steps in the path to finding myself. Being dissatisfied and settling for someone for the purpose of being consistent or sticking to what is comfortable is a decision and process that suck the life out of you. Trust me, I know this all too well.
Traveling abroad is something that I had once considered, but was told that I could not do. My freshman year in college, I wanted make the most of my college experience and study abroad. My boyfriend at the time threatened that if I even considered it, it would be the ultimate betrayal and we could no longer be together. Considering we were planning for forever, studying abroad wasn't feasible and I discarded the idea along with many of my other aspirations and dreams.
Fast forward a few days and I find myself reading The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz like a madwoman because I had to quickly read the book and write an analysis for one of my classes. While reading is usually pleasurable for me, I was so enveloped in this book that I am actually saving the last bit of it to read when I have time to relax. This book was a coming of age story about a woman who, fresh out of college, chanced into a job at an international bank and gave up a prestigious job on Wall Street to work for a non-profit women's organization that developed and assessed lending programs for impoverished woman globally. Her journey, reflections about her experiences and seeing her development and growth and the impact she made was so inspiring that I found myself bragging to everyone in ear shot about how great this book is.
With my life long interest in community service and all of my future career options tailored around helping others, one movie and one book completely changed me forever. Eat Pray Love and The Blue Sweater worked in conjunction with each other to show me parts of myself that I had suppressed long ago, parts of myself I had not yet realized and my capacity for success and happiness. These last few months have included a lot of important decisions, soul searching, positive changes and a little indulgence every now and then. I realized that the last few months, I have been on a similar journey trying to accomplish the same things. Although I'm not going to leave everything behind to pursue a worldwide quest to find myself, I am half way done with my Peace Corps application and constantly looking for new opportunities to find myself so that I don't end up married, unsatisfied with life and have a mid life crisis in the way that she did.
Life is splendid.
stephhh
No comments:
Post a Comment