Leaving Pieces

“You will never be completely at home again, because part of your heart always will be elsewhere. That is the price you pay for the richness of loving and knowing people in more than one place.” 

-Miriam Adeney

I want to leave pieces of myself all over the world. I want to tell my young children the tales of my travels and I want to inspire my older children to follow their dreams. I want to live, teach and inspire by example. How ludicrous it would be to tell my children, both my own and those who would fill my classroom, to follow their wildest dreams if I had never had the courage to do so myself.

            Ludicrous is a very fun word. But it does not describe who I am, or who I want to be. There are a lot of things I don’t know, things I’m still trying to piece together. Including but not limited to: who I am, what I want to do, where I want to be, what I’m trying to find. And while I’m striving to answer these questions, the last thing I want is to get so caught up in them that I forget to live. I don’t want to get lost amidst the anxious need to have all the bubbles filled in, all my choices made.

            And so I’ve come to at least one small conclusion: that I want to leave pieces of myself all over the world. One day far from now I want to be able to relish in all the places I’ve lived and loved, all the people who I gave a piece of myself to along the way.

            I don’t want just one place or one group of people to feel like home. I want to see home everywhere. I want to see love everywhere. And there I go again, wanting, wanting, wanting. What can I say? I guess I’m needy. 

Flash Foward

            I’m a latcher. I latch on to others' ideas as if they’re my own. I do it to the extent that I’m not sure what ideas and plans I really actually want to do for me and me alone and which ones I simply think I want to because so-and-so wants to.

            This is both a terrible thing and a wonderful thing. It’s terrible because I’m always conflicted, always torn between all these plans and ideas that others come up with. The instant someone says something about any kind of future life-plans I automatically imagine this possible future where I’m doing something similar or I am where they are.

            It’s wonderful because I’m constantly imagining my life in hundreds of different ways. Anything feels possible. All the potential futures seem within grasp.

            It happened just today. Twice actually. First my roommate and one of my closest friends, Sarah, came home from a weekend at Penn State for a grad school interview. She’s chatting on about Pennsylvania and someone says, “So we’re going to come live there with you, right?” And I flash forward to a possibility where I end up in Pennsylvania. I’m living with Sarah, teaching, going to grad school and loving life. I feel a pull towards this possible life.

            Not even two hours later I’m sitting at the circulation desk, working at the library when a fellow education friend of mine comes up to the desk. We talk on and on about lesson plans, PPAs, observations and the daily trials of student teaching. Then we talk about next year. She mentions that she’s interested in the Stonehill India program. Which is something I’ve been considering since I stepped on this campus. All of a sudden I flash forward to this possible future. One in India for a year, a place I’ll probably never get to otherwise. Teaching. I feel a pull towards this possible life.

            I feel these pulls towards all these different possible lives everyday. The truly difficult, seemingly impossible task is making the choice. I am paralyzed by making the choice. What do I actually want?

           

I want, I want, I want.

            Sometimes I feel like I have ADD. Not in the sense of an inability to sit still but in the sense that I want to do so much that I feel paralyzed. Everyday I am overwhelmed by my desire, yearning, need to do so many things.

I want to teach until I’m old and grey.

I want to be a photographer.

I want to travel until I’m penniless.

I want to work until I can pay off my all loans (don’t we all?).

I want to start a revolution.

I want to campaign for a better education system in the US.

I want to feed the world.

I want to do nothing but write for days on days until I’ve produced something of worth.

I want to learn how to sing.

I want to paint.

I want to spend my days, blood and sweat helping anyone who needs it.

I want to always be open enough to see the world form new angles.

I want, I want, I want.

            We live in a world of consumption. Buy this, this, this, and that. We want it all. We work to buy and we buy to bring ourselves happiness. We’re like junkies on the wrong drug. Our consumption and materialistic outlook has us determined to work so that we can purchase more goods which bring us a short-lived high. I don’t want a short-lived high. I don’t want to shy away from the road less traveled and shuffle along with everyone else. I’d say I refuse to but I haven’t yet veered away from the common path so we’re just going to have to wait and see about my next steps.  See if I have the guts to tear myself away from the clear path that has been paved so clearly before me.

            What’s really hard about tearing away from this perfectly paved path is that it still leads to a beautiful life. I consider my paved path to be one with me heading straight into my own classroom. Building a life, a family, and very likely being happy. I stare into this clear path and I feel security, excitement, and happiness.

            Then I stare down the path less taken: an overgrown, nearly hidden, dirt path. One filled with bumps and bruises, potholes, fear and the great unknown. Those last two, the fear and the great unknown, are like magnets. Pulling me away from my clear path and plunging me into what many would see as foolish. But that fear, I find it invigorating. After all when do we feel most alive? I can tell you my most alive moment: paragliding. I wish I could say I’d had the balls (and the cash) to do skydiving, but I didn’t. Regardless, paragliding was terrifying. Every part of me was shaking in its boots. But that fear, that rush of leaping outside my comfort zone and taking a leap of faith, it has a kind of magic to it. A beautiful and terrifying magic.

            I want to be surrounded by this magic. I want to shed this shell of who I am and let myself be everything I can be. I want, want, want, to do all those things I listed and so many more. And I’m not going to get them by following my beautifully paved path. But I have a shot at getting it if I pull back the brush and push forward onto the hidden path of unknowns. If I just close my eyes and take a leap.