Personal Tensions: Or, "Why are these blog posts always so appropriately timed?"

(Note: I apologize for the lateness of this post. I felt like I needed more time to reflect on it, and I was busy for all of Saturday and much of Sunday. Also, forgive the length; I've been trying to take more time for self-reflection lately, and it tends to spill over into this blog. Please do read all the way through though; I do think that it's worth it, and I won't be providing CliffsNotes.)

"Have patience with all that remains unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves. Like locked rooms. Like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers, for they cannot now be given to you, because you would not be able to live them. The point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps gradually, and without even noticing it, you will find yourself, some day, living yourself into the answers."

--Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

There's no way to describe it, but it seems like these blog posts always come at the best time, and always in the best way. Right in the middle of a major internal and personal struggle which has consumed much of my past year or so, albeit more so in the past six months, I'm struck with the opportunity to reflect on my own personal values (i.e. last week, with congruence) and commitments. As well, I'm given the opportunity to learn about my own personal qualities that shaped me into the person I am today (i.e. with the MBTI).

I can't even begin to express how grateful I am for this opportunity. ELP has been the best decision I've made since enrolling at Santa Clara University, and it means the world to me that we have such a great group of people with whom to share our stories, connect, envision, plan, create, and discuss. As all leaders should do. So thank you for that. At mid-quarter, here's to another five weeks of serendipitous awesomeness.

The Setup
(Naturally, the other posts on this blog form a bit of necessary background as well. Feel free to click around on other posts if you feel like you need more information or setup.)

I knew from the beginning that college would not be an easy transition. Little did I know that it would be as difficult that it has been. Flashback to last year. At my Jesuit high school of nearly one thousand students, I was deeply and passionately involved. I took all Honors/AP classes, I ran track for three years, I served as a member and then as the President of Knights of the Leash, a service organization for junior and senior men, I organized numerous class-wide events junior year and then served as the President of my Senior Class Council, I served on two Search retreat crews and then led one as a Crew "Chief," among many other activities. It was a busy few years, but it was more rewarding than I ever possibly could have imagined. My class was a close, respected class, regarded as the "best" that Gonzaga Prep had had in recent years. I say this not to brag, but to emphasize the extent of my relationships that I had nurtured back at home.

Here, at Santa Clara University, I've had to navigate starting over again. From scratch. Super daunting. Super frustrating. Everyone been challenged by this, albeit to differing extents. But as someone who is used to open and friendly relationships, and who had stuck with nearly the same group of people, plus or minus a few, since the age of six, it's been an experience to say the least.

Anyway desiring to get more involved in Campus Ministry, which I loved working with in high school, on the first weekend of February, I attended a retreat offered at Santa Clara University called DISCOVER. Rooted in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and covering the topic of discernment, the retreat offered an opportunity to reflect on many of the same questions which we have been discussing over the past few weeks in ELP. Five questions stood out as the most important:

"What brings me joy?"
"What are my gifts?"
"How can I discern my relationships?"
"Who does the world need me to be?"
"What are the costs?"

Going into the retreat, I had been expecting to talk, discuss, and reflect mostly on vocation. What you are called to do, whatever that may be. As someone who is undeclared as toward a major, I wanted answers and I wanted them then. What should I do? I mean, sure, I was conceded to the fact that I probably would not magically stumble upon a major possibility, but I at least hoped that I would be offered some sort of inkling. Some path forward.

The "What"
After the retreat, I suffered a sort of breakdown. Those of you have been on Search/Encounter/Kairos might have experienced something called a "retreat high." This was the anti-Search high, the anti-retreat high. A retreat low, if you will. A totally and completely depressive state surrounding my future, what I was meant to do, and how I was meant to do it.

Upon returning to campus, I tried to allow everything to sink in. I wanted to just accept the fact that I had gotten nothing out of the weekend, and that it had been a total waste of time. I wanted to write it off as "just a good weekend away from campus," and nothing more. I wanted to think of it as a failed retreat that offered little to me, and little to others. But I couldn't. There was something about DISCOVER that had stuck, and I couldn't place my finger on it. And for whatever reason, it depressed me to no end. I was confused, lost, and possibly in need of psychiatric evaluation (I'm kidding, sort of...). I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life or how I would get there. I didn't feel like I had any true friends at Santa Clara University, at least not in the same sense as I had friends at home, which further depressed me. I didn't even really know if this was where I needed to be in my life.

I called my parents, who were, quite frankly, shocked that a retreat could arouse such a negative response. They knew I had been struggling in adapting to the college experience, and in my own indecision (or perhaps genuine unknowing), but I think that this was perhaps my biggest breakdown yet, and they were caught off-guard. I'm really, really close with my mom, so the shift to a school nearly a thousand miles away from home has been extraordinarily challenging. It didn't help that I had just done extremely poorly on a Chemistry midterm and was debating dropping the class.

So as I called/texted/Skype'd/Facebook'ed/generally talked to my parents, tears rolling down by this point, I just wanted to know. I just wanted to know. I wanted to know what my life was meant to be, and I wanted a step-by-step plan to help me get there. The entire experience centered around my lack of answers and my fear of the unknown. Over the course of these four days after DISCOVER, I came to realize that these answers would never come, no matter how much I begged and pleaded. They would not come from my parents, they would not come from a retreat, they would not come from a self-help book, a movie, a song--the answers would not come. Most of all, they wouldn't come from me...at least not directly, overtly through a conscious "decision" in the truest sense.

The "So What"

Rather, I realized that the answers "could not be given to me, because I would not be able to live them." That Rainer Maria Rilke quote, above, which had been passed out on the last day of the retreat, stuck with me. "The point is to live everything." What?

The peaceful stillness of the mountains awaits. Inspired by Sierra Club founder John Muir's famous line--"the mountains are calling and I must go."

I have spent so much of my life planning for or worrying about my future (What can I do that will make myself look favorable for the Stanford application? The Notre Dame application? The Georgetown application? What can I do that will give me a lot of merit-based Financial Aid at Gonzaga? At Santa Clara? At Loyola Marymount?) that I have failed to live in the present. In many ways, the very concept remains foreign to me. How can I even act in such a way that allows me to be cognizant of the future, aware that it remains a detail to consider, a point to bear in mind, yet still keep a solid focus on what makes me who I am. On what brings me joy. On my gifts. On what the world needs me to be. Such thinking is not forward-looking at all, although it is a vocational exercise. It's present-looking.

And that quote...it's also present-looking. Live the questions, indeed, but also, and critically, live your questions. No one else's. Don't be swayed by the opinions or judgments of others, something to which I know now that I am particularly prone. But instead, live your passions. Live what makes you, you. Don't try to be anyone else. The rest will follow accordingly and how it is meant to follow. The most important thing is that you vigorously pursue your passions.

It comes as somewhat of a shock to me that such a supposedly "obvious" idea, one that has been drilled into my brain over and over and over, would be such a depressant. But I realized that I hadn't totally been pursuing my own passions. I realized that I needed to do a better job of letting me be me, and even better, I realized that true happiness, true success, both here at Santa Clara University and in the real world, would not come until I did a better job of being myself. Living more truly the "magis"--the Latin phrase translated from ad majorem dei gloriam and meaning "the more." Living more positively the challenge that I had been given at my high school baccalaureate mass and throughout my high school career.

Ite inflammate omnia. Another Latin phrase, this one meaning, "go forth and set the world on fire." And, well, I don't know if you've noticed, but true "fire" doesn't exactly come from passions, joys, gifts restricted and tied up.

The "Now What"
Moving forward, I'm trying to make a more conscious and constant effort to discern my passions, my gifts, my joys. I sent out a survey to my Facebook friends asking them to respond with my greatest gifts and my greatest weaknesses. The response has been humbling, but, I think, necessary for my self development. It's helped me to realize where my talents truly lie, rather than relying on a potentially skewed view from my own perspective. That's another thing...perspective helps. (Note: if you'd like to participate in my survey, you can do so completely anonymously at this Google Doc.)

I've been trying to recognize which academic areas are truly passions, and which are just my own pandering to outside interests (i.e. friends, parents, culture, society, etc.). Should I really pursue something in the sciences, for example, or are the social sciences more for me? Is there any way to consider double-majoring so as to leave more options open and continue exploring my interests?

I think I've discovered a few of my true passions. Helping people is one. I've always enjoyed community service and leadership opportunities, and direct support for those in need has always been something to which I've strived. But beyond simple and potentially cliché applications of service, I try to build community among those around me, especially among those I know well. I believe that community is one of the foundations of a productive, great, livable society. It's the way that we survive; by coming together and enjoying each other's company, and I love working to build that sense, that appreciation, among the people I serve and with whom I live and learn. Perhaps that's why I'm beginning to think that the social sciences might be a better option for me; such an opportunity would allow me to build my community-building skills from within a certain framework (i.e. Psychology, which would skew toward either research or clinical application, or Political Science or Economics, which would skew toward law, etc.)

That's not to say that it hasn't been a challenge. I'm still struggling to adapt to this new environment. I still don't really know what I want to do with my life. I still question my decisions every day. But I'm confident that I'm on the right path moving forward in living my questions. Living my passions. Living my personal "magis."

Supposedly spoken by St. Ignatius of Loyola to Francis Xavier as he set out for India in 1540, "ite inflammate omnia," or "go forth and set the world on fire," has become a sort of motto, a way of living one's life, for the Jesuits and their sympathizers around the world.

And, with help, from God and from others, I believe that I will be able to embrace my passions, my gifts, my "calling," to truly "go forth and set the world on fire."