I'd love to say here that I wouldn't do much differently. Learning to live with authenticity has been a big part of my story.
When I was a little girl, I was pretty good at making up stories, so much so that I learned to lie in great detail, to make up the life that I wanted to be living. Eventually maturity caught up to me, and I became ashamed of my lying, so instead, I started to write. To make up on paper. I wrote a book in fourth grade called The Dream where I processed my own emotions about my parents' divorce and the dislocation I often felt through the lens of 14-year-old Cylie, my protagonist. Fueled by the inspiration of disquieted Meg in A Wrinkle In Time, I wrote Cylie as pensive and intuitive and very squeamish. I wrote her as a young woman who was in part who I hoped I could become, and in part who I knew I would become, for better or worse.
I think writing that book helped me grow up a bit, as did having a very busy adolescence, when I acquired a great many skills and worried not too much about who I was, other than to be it. I did not worry about being judged as many of my peers probably did - I was a tough critic with myself about my looks and my grades, but I felt as long as I could get off to college, I was doing well.
In college I figured out, despite much relational turmoil and a couple of really big losses in my life, who I was. I was someone who wanted to stay active - I rowed for a semester and ran regularly. I was someone who wanted to be of service - I led community projects throughout Baltimore and facilitated diversity dialogues on campus. Mostly, I was someone who wanted to learn about how people work - through classes and said relational turmoil.
From the time I graduated to the time in front of me now, I began a period of less security with myself. This is a shame - I was finally in a place of actual security in many ways - with a career and young adulthood squarely in front of me! But the problem was, for the first time - or so it felt - my life was my own. What did I want to do with it?
I am still exploring potentional answers to that question. I know that the passions formed by my childhood and developed by my education are stable and growing - I want to improve the human condition by learning about it, having compassion for it, and tapping into my talents to inspire it. I want to love and be loved. I want to take care of my body and my heart and my soul. But what would I do differently if I knew nobody would judge me? What would I do differently if I knew I would not judge myself?
I think I'd live with my emotions more. I'd embarrass myself by displaying the pure joy I get almost each and every day by waking up, listening to a beautiful song, seeing the faces of people I care about, getting the opportunity to walk, talk, sing, breathe, each and every day.
Is it just me, or do we take it all for granted, all the time? We've had global tragedies occur to us so recently, but how many of us are still sleeping through life, not appreciating it, and how very ephemeral it really is? I feel like I do that, and sometimes I live like I am already dead to the beauty of this world and my place in it because I feel like others would judge my joy - envy it or laugh at it or consider me a stupid fool for caring as much as I do about my life and the potential we all have.
Time to live like the living, to live alive.
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