As the famous song goes.
And I’m afraid, so afraid because while I do have something of a destination in mind, I don’t know what I’m going to do there.
And I’m afraid because I came into my MBA program with one set of goals and motivations and I’m coming through with a whole different paradigm.
I’m not the same person I was, nto at all. That, or many of my illusions about myself and the world have been shattered.
i also find that I am not really going to live a life like my parents, or necessarily do the things the way I dreamed when I was a little girl. Maybe I won’t get married in the church my parents did, or in a church at all. I won’t be a county court lawyer, but something else entirely, and hopefully on the other side of the ocean.
The world is a small place, but is also sooo biiiiig. And it changes you.
I can’t go back to where I used to be, as Princess Jasmine said.
I feel a lot of conflict because what I actually am, and what I planned on, are so different.
I also am just really struggling to have some self confidence right now. I’m not entirely sure why- I guess it has a lot ot do with my internal/external transformation, but I think it has to do with aging a little too. Or maturing as you will. Maybe even growing up, but I sure hope not too much, not yet, I dont know.
i don’t like to do the things that I used to do, or rather, maybe i didn’t love them before but now I just have no use for drinking a bottle of champgne and going out to raise hell most of the time.
My friends from college might as wlel live in outer space.
Most surprising I guess is that I haven’t really seriously really looked at a man in like, seven months since i met my dude in Paris. Sure, life’s been pretty busy and I haven’t had time, but it’s been a whiel since I’ve even seen him, and while that might all play into the fact it’s easy to pine for those too far away to be everyday and annoying, I would rather have a long lasting kind fo thing these days.
Not to mention said guy, while having his moments of Prince Charmingness, and just kind of feeling like my boyfriend, is just soo far from like, everything i would have expected besides being a computer nerdy guy like any other, who likes to watch wrestling and drink beer. Yeah, I really ahd to go to Paris for that.
i guess the shocking thing is that I like this guy, and i didn’t find myself an art historian or writer or lefty intellectual to argue with. And that maybe I didn’t dislike my not dissimilar high school boyfriend that much.
Or maybe I’ll completely change my mind about everything, go join the Peace Corps or Army or something, and never be heard from again. O rmaybe I’ll go work for some internatonal corporation yet not have my soul sucked out.
Who knows.
Not to mention, I like, have friends that are engaged and married and parents. Weird. it might actually happen to me someday. Even more surprising, I have friends with real jobs, or who have had real, forty hour (actually more like 60), benefits, long term, career building jobs. And I think one day, the things I like so much now won’t be as important, and I can even feel it coming as I think about how much I want to be there for my kids and want to be in a relationship, and someday get married. Maybe someday, I’ll be a grownup. I hope not though, I want to stay young at heart 🙂
I found something on Paulo Coelho’s website, written by Thomas Merton, a Catholic monk, that really resonated:
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going,
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Namaste,
MJ