"Tell the truth and run"
Two
things: 1) tomorrow night, one of my closest friends from college is
leaving the country for a few weeks. 2) I just finished watching the
movie, Into The Wild, which another close friend recommended or more
accurately, quite insisted, that I watch. In these two things are
elements of wanderlust or footloose-ness which, coupled with a status
another friend shared on facebook today, leads me to this post on the
question of what I am doing post-graduation. The status was, “It doesn’t
interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing” - Axiom of the
Kogi indigenous people of Colombia.
I have given many variants of the same reply to the question of what I am doing with my life now. Most days, it is preparing for graduate school or traveling. The answer is “just living” when I am not in a particularly entertaining mood. And sometimes I say that I am trying to figure it out. But by far, the latter is the biggest lie. I am not figuring it out because for the most part, I know what the end goal is and I am pretty sure of the path I want to take to get there. My deliberate decision to take a year off to do nothing and most things sits uncomfortably with most people's idea of what one should do after college. My year off is not necessarily a break per say because there is nothing I want to take a break from and I am also not necessarily tired so this is not the traditional vacation time between college and graduate school. More honestly, it is not even a time of liminality which would so neatly encapsulate what some people feel after graduation; of not knowing what to do with their lives, of ambiguity or disorientation. The next step for me is clear. To not have a plan. To live. To be footloose in the greatest sense of the word.
And I am not the first to do this. Watching the movie Into the Wild was a surreal experience for me because I could relate very well to the things the character, Chris, illuminated in his path to the discovery of self and the purest form of existence. Some of the questions which were explored in the movie and will be recurring themes on this blog are:
a. What is the source(s) of happiness? Is it being with oneself? Nature? Human beings? One human being? God? All these things?
b. How do you get to the purest form of one’s being? What is the core of the human spirit? Does it most come from new experiences, people, ideas, emotions, other things?
c. How do you negotiate a world you can not live outside of but are not keen to live within? Is the idea of having a niche in the world a metaphysical experience, not necessarily physical?
d. Is it unfair to the world for a person who has so much to offer to the world (ie. intelligence, skill, talent, love, etc.) to decide to live away from the world? Which leads to the question of what is our purpose on earth? To discover oneself or to give of oneself?
e. Was life meant to be difficult? Do we have to practice deliberate self sacrifice (off the top references to Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi)?
f. Is change truly possible? How, why, for whom, in what ways, etc.
Ofcourse, these questions intersect, overlap, and question and answer each other in interesting ways. For the most part, I believe that this experience of life is very relative. By the end of this gap year, I hope that the experiences I have bring me to deeper understandings of these questions as they relate to my understanding of myself and life. As my friend, Rich, wrote to me, "Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself” - Miles David. And I believe that you find as much as you create yourself. Thus, I do not think that there are standard answers to these questions and I do not believe that the answers are non malleable.
But when I rescinded the job offer for TFA, that was one of my first answers to life as I know it, to a culture of over-dependence on job security and security period (post coming soon on sovereignty, national interest, statehood, violence and the average citizen). When I told those who wrote my recommendations why I did so, most of them responded that they understand that I may not be ready for teaching or they thought that I realized that TFA is not the organization I want to work for. In fact, I am really ready to teach (and will probably do some variant of this in the next year). Moreover, I have nothing against TFA with respect to my personal engagement with the work that they do. Rather, in the days after I received the acceptance email, I realized that I have a unique opportunity to be free from the delineated path which has been set out for us all. Moreover, the past year had set up that past and final semester to be a sobering one; the disillusionment and disheartened state of realizing that I could not create change in this world with the sense of urgency, anxiousness, and calculated ideals I carried with me. The choice is to take every opportunity as it comes and to not lock myself in any direction at this stage. So in choosing the road not always afforded, allowed or taken, I am not doing it to be different, cool, or counter culture. Rather, what I want to be and do truly aligns with what I was meant to be and do at this moment. It makes sense to me that I am doing this now.
So to be clear, it is not that I am not going to do anything or even work. In fact, I am going to work some, volunteer some, travel some (hopefully, a lot), play some, love someone intimately some, write some, read some, think, reflect, and meditate some, apply some. Take time to do some of the things I have not been able to do and then truly enjoy those things I have done and want to do again. For the specifics, I know I want to learn how to drive, braid and weave, and sew. Braiding/weaving and sewing will be my side hustles for life. I love the beauty, freedom, and versatility of hair and clothing and I want to explore variations of styles and essence for myself and others. I also want to be there for my sister during her college application process; be there physically. I want to stay with my family. I really want to know everyone in my family deeply. My decisions to go to school, travel, or leave the country have been too greatly propelled by an impetus to find freedom away from the ties of tradition, culture and religion. I am ready to face the question of how will I live my life in the context of being a Ghanaian-American raised as a Presbyterian and Seventh-day Adventist head-on.
And how do I feel about this. In all honestly, I am scared. But truly excited. Anxious. Happy. Refreshed. “Sobered”. Empowered. While I am not omniscient and I believe in a God who ultimately determines the fate of my life and of this world, I sense a unique opportunity to create for myself the life that I want. And I am going to follow this intuition.
I have given many variants of the same reply to the question of what I am doing with my life now. Most days, it is preparing for graduate school or traveling. The answer is “just living” when I am not in a particularly entertaining mood. And sometimes I say that I am trying to figure it out. But by far, the latter is the biggest lie. I am not figuring it out because for the most part, I know what the end goal is and I am pretty sure of the path I want to take to get there. My deliberate decision to take a year off to do nothing and most things sits uncomfortably with most people's idea of what one should do after college. My year off is not necessarily a break per say because there is nothing I want to take a break from and I am also not necessarily tired so this is not the traditional vacation time between college and graduate school. More honestly, it is not even a time of liminality which would so neatly encapsulate what some people feel after graduation; of not knowing what to do with their lives, of ambiguity or disorientation. The next step for me is clear. To not have a plan. To live. To be footloose in the greatest sense of the word.
And I am not the first to do this. Watching the movie Into the Wild was a surreal experience for me because I could relate very well to the things the character, Chris, illuminated in his path to the discovery of self and the purest form of existence. Some of the questions which were explored in the movie and will be recurring themes on this blog are:
a. What is the source(s) of happiness? Is it being with oneself? Nature? Human beings? One human being? God? All these things?
b. How do you get to the purest form of one’s being? What is the core of the human spirit? Does it most come from new experiences, people, ideas, emotions, other things?
c. How do you negotiate a world you can not live outside of but are not keen to live within? Is the idea of having a niche in the world a metaphysical experience, not necessarily physical?
d. Is it unfair to the world for a person who has so much to offer to the world (ie. intelligence, skill, talent, love, etc.) to decide to live away from the world? Which leads to the question of what is our purpose on earth? To discover oneself or to give of oneself?
e. Was life meant to be difficult? Do we have to practice deliberate self sacrifice (off the top references to Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi)?
f. Is change truly possible? How, why, for whom, in what ways, etc.
Ofcourse, these questions intersect, overlap, and question and answer each other in interesting ways. For the most part, I believe that this experience of life is very relative. By the end of this gap year, I hope that the experiences I have bring me to deeper understandings of these questions as they relate to my understanding of myself and life. As my friend, Rich, wrote to me, "Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself” - Miles David. And I believe that you find as much as you create yourself. Thus, I do not think that there are standard answers to these questions and I do not believe that the answers are non malleable.
But when I rescinded the job offer for TFA, that was one of my first answers to life as I know it, to a culture of over-dependence on job security and security period (post coming soon on sovereignty, national interest, statehood, violence and the average citizen). When I told those who wrote my recommendations why I did so, most of them responded that they understand that I may not be ready for teaching or they thought that I realized that TFA is not the organization I want to work for. In fact, I am really ready to teach (and will probably do some variant of this in the next year). Moreover, I have nothing against TFA with respect to my personal engagement with the work that they do. Rather, in the days after I received the acceptance email, I realized that I have a unique opportunity to be free from the delineated path which has been set out for us all. Moreover, the past year had set up that past and final semester to be a sobering one; the disillusionment and disheartened state of realizing that I could not create change in this world with the sense of urgency, anxiousness, and calculated ideals I carried with me. The choice is to take every opportunity as it comes and to not lock myself in any direction at this stage. So in choosing the road not always afforded, allowed or taken, I am not doing it to be different, cool, or counter culture. Rather, what I want to be and do truly aligns with what I was meant to be and do at this moment. It makes sense to me that I am doing this now.
So to be clear, it is not that I am not going to do anything or even work. In fact, I am going to work some, volunteer some, travel some (hopefully, a lot), play some, love someone intimately some, write some, read some, think, reflect, and meditate some, apply some. Take time to do some of the things I have not been able to do and then truly enjoy those things I have done and want to do again. For the specifics, I know I want to learn how to drive, braid and weave, and sew. Braiding/weaving and sewing will be my side hustles for life. I love the beauty, freedom, and versatility of hair and clothing and I want to explore variations of styles and essence for myself and others. I also want to be there for my sister during her college application process; be there physically. I want to stay with my family. I really want to know everyone in my family deeply. My decisions to go to school, travel, or leave the country have been too greatly propelled by an impetus to find freedom away from the ties of tradition, culture and religion. I am ready to face the question of how will I live my life in the context of being a Ghanaian-American raised as a Presbyterian and Seventh-day Adventist head-on.
And how do I feel about this. In all honestly, I am scared. But truly excited. Anxious. Happy. Refreshed. “Sobered”. Empowered. While I am not omniscient and I believe in a God who ultimately determines the fate of my life and of this world, I sense a unique opportunity to create for myself the life that I want. And I am going to follow this intuition.
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