While We Wait

“Everything will work out in the end”: a phrase we all have heard muttered to us at one point in our lives. I am the first to say that patience is not an attribute that I have been blessed with. When I want something, I want it immediately. When I want something to happen, I do everything in my power to make it happen as soon as possible. But even still, I have always trusted the quiet work of time. I believe that with time, we gain the healing that we need, we acquire understanding that may not have been known otherwise, we learn infinitely more about ourselves, and we grow undoubtedly more compassionate about the world around us. But as I wait for the nature of time to allow things fall into place, I often find myself wondering, “What do I do in the meantime?” It is completely against my nature to sit back and allow things to happen. I want to do something, I want to work at something, and I want to know that with whatever I am working for, there is an end goal in sight. So, what do we do in the meantime? What do we do when we cannot do anything at all? Throughout this past year, I have learned to let time run its course. It has been both necessarily humbling and completely frustrating. But, in my moments of restlessness, I have learned that letting go has freed me to gain far more than I could have ever dreamed of. A year ago, I found myself in an LSAT prep course. I spent my summer days taking practice tests, attending online classroom tutorials, watching videos, learning skill sets, researching top law schools, and crunching numbers that would ultimately determine where I would lie on a spectrum of students all hoping to achieve the same thing. About halfway through the course, and few months before the test date, I decided that I did not want to attend law school after all. While I felt convicted that pursuing a law degree was not what I wanted to do, I forced myself to keep trying it. Though I wish I could say it was the drive of perseverance that kept me to my studies longer than I wished to be, it was actually the fear of not knowing what I would be doing otherwise. My fear, instead of my passion, was driving my decision to stay in that LSAT prep course. For me, this path held a somewhat known four years ahead of me. I would study for the test, take the test, work in the meantime, apply to schools. Then, I would choose, from a hopeful competitive batch of schools, the perfect school for me. After that, I would spend three years in school, learning, working, experience the legal world. I knew what was ahead of me. But, if I followed my heart, if I listened to my instinct that was steering me away from those known four years, consequently leaping into the unknown, I would land in exactly that: pure, raw, dark unknown. “What would I do?”, “Who would I be?”, “Who would I become?” were some of the questions that plagued me during this inner battle with myself in trusting and following my heart or living in security. What I was not aware of, though, was the outflowing amount of opportunity that lay ahead of me in my decision to follow my heart and leave my fear behind. Today, I am preparing to move to London, to attend graduate school at London School of Economics, and to begin my journey towards a career in journalism. In hindsight, I can confidently say that with time, everything worked out the way it was supposed to. Before graduating college, I would have never pictured myself living in London, pursuing journalism, or even writing for a blog in the year after graduation. And although everything worked out better than I could have ever imagined it to be, I still had moments of doubt, times of restlessness, and instinctively found myself wondering, “Well, what do I do now?” But, those quiet moments taught me that what I found my security in was not sufficient for the longing in my heart. I had to learn to allow my sense of security heed to the will of my heart. You see, we often idolize our sense of security. We find ourselves worthwhile when we have a security in our futures. We attribute value to ourselves when we are actively pursuing our futures. On the contrary, we wallow when we cannot actively do anything, when we lose control, when things are out of our hands. But, the truth is, our best prediction of what our future holds does not nearly reflect any amount of our worth. You are worthy whether or not you are pursuing your dreams. You are worthy even in the midst of the chaos and calamity of the unknown. You are worthy while you wait to figure it out- whatever that “it” may be. You are worthy even when you do not have anything figured out at all. You are worthy. So, as you wait, as you ponder, as you rest, as you feel helpless, and as you begin to dream again, let your worth be found in the strength of who you are. As you wait, let your spirit be free in the person you know yourself to be, instead of the future you think you ought to achieve. Believe in your worth- not because you have carefully mapped out the next five years of your life, but because your life, thus far, has created a uniquely beautiful, strong, and worthy person. Believe in yourself today- because you stand confidently and wholly loved in who you are today more than any other future “you” that you could possibly dream up. While you wait, believe that you are the truest “you” that you could be and that you stand distinguished exactly where you are, not wherever you think you ought to be.