One Young Woman's Thoughts

I need to say something.  I don't think there's anything specific; I just feel that right now, as I'm awake and half the world's asleep, I want to get my voice out there.  There's no reason, but there doesn't have to be. 

I feel happy right now, and there isn't even really a reason.  Ever since I started college, I've just been a happier person in general.  I'm pretty sure there are multiple reasons: some that I know, and probably some that I'm not even aware of. 

One of the things I do know is that I can feel myself maturing.  Sometimes I can't believe that I'm as old as I am, but when I look back on things, or I think about my changing attitude, I realize that I can see it there.  A lot of things in my life make a lot more sense to me now than they did this time last year. 

I've learned to accept that I may never understand my future until I'm living it.  This used to bother me so much that it was in the back of my mind every moment I was awake.  For a long time, I was obsessed with trying to figure out what I was "supposed" to do.  I actually thought that there was only one answer to that, and that I had to find it or I would be wasting all of my time and I'd never be happy. 

At some point, I decided that I had to just tell my mind to shut up when it got back on that train of thought, because I knew that I was only thinking the same things over and over in circles, and it was doing nothing but stressing me out.  At first, this was just avoiding the problem, but somehow, it turned into something else when I wasn't really looking. 

It makes sense to me now that a person just has to live their life and stop questioning it all the time.  Our culture tries to tell us that we have to pick a career and stick with it all of our lives to be happy, but there's no actual reason to limit ourselves like that.  If I wanted, I could end up as a forty-year-old who still changes jobs every couple of years because I've found something that I think I'll enjoy more or be better at than what I'm doing at the time.  There doesn't have to be a problem with that if it doesn't bother me.  In the end, I'm pretty sure that life's just a lot more flexible than I used to think it was.  Anything can happen, really.  And I don't have to know about it beforehand.

There's something else amazing about life that I keep slowly learning.  People sometimes think that they're doing nothing, that they're wasting or biding their time until the next stage in their life.  (They might even feel like they're ready to move on and it's only technicalities like fulfilling college hours that keep them back.)  The amazing thing about this situation is that sometimes, the person thinking these things is making a huge difference and they don't even realize it. 

I often used to feel like the time I spent in school wasn't working toward anything specific (like a career) and the time I spent with friends was only useful in helping each of us to enjoy ourselves for a while and nothing more.  There are two times in particular stand out in my mind: times that a friend told me that I had made the biggest difference in their life.  Both times, they revealed something to me about their inner selves, and how my presence had caused them to rethink something in their life or look at it in a new way.  Both times, the difference I had made came about just from me being myself.  Well, being myself around them. 

I read back on what I just said and it sounds wrong.  The point in this isn't to brag at all.  The point is that a person can make a difference just by being. 

I feel like this is an important thing for people to know, but at this point words fail me and I can't tell you why.  Just know that you probably mean much more to the people around you than you realize.  I happened to be lucky in the fact that I had someone tell me about the difference I made.  People don't often tell each other what they really mean to each other.

I don't claim to be changing the lives of people around me by achieving anything myself, or by knowing some big secret to being meaningful in everything I do, or anything like that.  I don't take credit for the way I'm growing and changing and becoming myself.  I feel like that's determined more by the amazing people I spend time with, and the amazing God who created me.  His most incredible things are usually done in ways we don't even notice.

Thank you for putting up with the strange journey that I've led you on today.  I have another revelation or two rattling around in my brain that I could share with you, but we'll save those for another early morning. 

-Deidra