I was thinking about the purpose of life and batting around different options.
Sex? Too biological and simple minded. There is so much more to experience, see, and learn to have the pinnacle of existence just be sex.
Then I remembered a paper I wrote and gave a presentation on for my Honors Last Lecture Seminar during my senior year of college. To be fair it-doesn't really talk about the purpose of life, but more so how does one know if they are leading a significant life.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end…Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone,” (Merton). One aspect in Thomas Merton’s “Thoughts in Solitude” prayer highlights the importance of belonging and a sense of connection, so we know we aren’t alone in the world. This idea conceptualizes what pushed me to find avenues and places to share my ideas and meet new people. Boise State University has given me the opportunity to learn from and with my peers as the world grew and expanded in front of our eyes through shared experiences and different opinions. I have experienced the beautiful coming together of people and ideas during my time at college. These experiences have helped me see the importance of leading a significant life.
Leading a significant life is a mixture of internally working towards that goal of trying to have a meaningful life and the external impact you have on your community whomever that ends of being. Community is a crucial part because it allows you to be fully known and interact with society. Through that connectivity you are able to formulate your identity and be true to yourself, which leads you to being true and honest to others. I think people get caught up in leading false lives to keep up an image or not to disrupt another’s happiness. However, we all forget that every person has a special gift or passion, ourselves included. You just need to take what you are given and do something with it. So we don’t need to worry about what other people think because they are too caught up in their own world to be focused on yours. Gary Badcock in ‘Choosing’ says that, “We cannot choose well for the future without a sense of identity in the present and without a realistic sense of what we may become,” (Badcock). Badcock explains that we cannot choose without a sense of self-awareness and identity in the present. We need to be real with who we are and share our unique thoughts and ideas with others, and that will be a component to help us reach our full potential.
My friends that I have accumulated over the years have definitively influenced and expanded my world views. They are from a variety of backgrounds and come from all over the world. I am able to learn so much from talking with them and listening to their opinions. Growing up, I assumed people probably had around the same life experiences as I did because it’s all I knew. My friends have opened my eyes to the real issues out there. I had no idea the struggles people go through on a daily basis. I’ve helped my friends through break ups, deaths of friends, and extreme allergic reactions. These have been valuable learning experiences to me, even though they were very difficult at the time. They have also shown me that I am not alone in my way of thinking and that I am normal by being weird. This connection with my friends is part of what can be pulled out of Merton’s prayer. The sense of belonging and craving to not be alone motivated me to find communities of friends that share my point of view and help expose me to new ideas. My experiences in college have allowed me to help people other than myself and give back to the communities that have helped shape me into who I am today.
The clubs I have partaken in have affected how I see myself and how I fit into the world. In Team helped me see how I can have some input into bigger events in the campus, even if we were used mostly as a think tank and event volunteers. Being a site leader for Service Saturday showed me how little parts of service can positively influence something bigger than myself. Once I lead a group of fraternity brothers, and all we did was help paint part of a hallway for the Good Samaritan House. It’s crazy how much joy and relief such a small task can bring. I have found that what makes me feel like I am leading a significant life is giving back to society to make the world a little less of a terrible place.
College has thrown me into uncomfortable and unfamiliar situations that I hated at the time; however, I learned and grew the best in those situations. Now I seek new opportunities and experiences because I know that they will ultimately turn out to be great learning experiences. I forced myself to join the church choir in freshman year, which helped me grow more in my faith and start building my community at St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center. I have done more group projects than I can count, and have learned not to hate them as much as I did back in high school. I took a leadership and management course in my junior year, and my professor changed my perspective of group projects. He made me realize that while having a group of your friends will make you more comfortable, a group full of diverse perspectives and backgrounds will lead to a better end result even though it could take longer to reach that end goal. I use a lot of what I learned in that class in projects since, and it has helped me realize the importance of going outside of your comfort zone and working with other people because they have a vast amount of knowledge and experiences that I simply don’t have.
The College of Business and Economics has shaped how I view the world and analyze what is going on. I always catch myself using supply and demand to rationalize a point, or understand how a certain move was beneficial for a person or business in the long run. Even in a meeting for Bronco Catholic before the semester started, we were going over our goals for our organization and we got on the topic of our target audience. I was so excited! Hardly anyone else could get a word in, or if they did I had a quick rebuttal to why or why not their point was valid.
I was able to spend a semester abroad and attend the University College of Cork in Ireland. I took amazing marketing courses there that really challenged me to think critically about the current marketing environment and how it is different internationally. My Social Media Marketing and Communications professor there impacted how I think about communicating to consumers and how a lot of companies are doing it wrong. He wanted us to see how marketing is used out in the world now. He challenged us to go out and do it better, but not for the monetary aspect (as several of my previous professors have joked about) but to actually suit consumer needs and get products to consumers that could benefit them. This professor helped reinforce my belief that it is possible to lead a career in marketing with integrity.
I used to think that what I do in my time in Idaho is not going to impact the world at large. That the little decisions I make are not life changing and won’t really influence people. However, you can never know what impact you have. My professor back in Ireland probably won’t know that his impact has reached as far as Idaho, but his teachings will have a ripple effect now through my actions, what I chose to do, and the others I interact with. People are always coming and going out of my communities and it’s impossible to know what they’ll take with them when they go. I hope that what they take forms them into a better person and helps improve society.
College has helped me set the foundation for future generations who come after me, and those continuing to be a part of Bronco Catholic. I have the honor of being the president and events coordinator this year, and have done a variety of tasks over the past four years. I have been a part of a dynamic team that pushes me to grow as a leader and encourages me to improve as a person. In five years from now, all of my friends will have graduated and I’m sure most of the staff I know will move on to greener pastures. I doubt anyone will really know who I am when I visit the campus and my old stomping grounds, but I am content knowing that I have made a positive impact on the campus and community while I have been here. I have helped students find their home in our odd little community and made them feel accepted for who they are.
This little community at St. Paul’s Catholic Student Center has strengthened my faith and helped me realize that I have and will continue to rely on my faith for my entire life. Annie Dillard explains this intense commitment best in ‘Living Like a Weasel’ where she retells a story about how a man once found a weasel skull firmly attached to the neck of an eagle he shot. The weasel made sure he didn’t let go of the bird even if it did mean he would die still attached to the eagle. In my life, my faith has always been a necessity that I hang onto through all of my experiences, and I am deeply committed to it. My community at Bronco Catholic has enabled me to grow in my faith and help others in their journey as well.
I used to think that my faith was a solitary activity, and I adamantly avoided talking about anything religious to anyone. My peers all through middle school and high school, who were mostly Mormon, would be legitimately surprised to find out that I was Catholic. My faith community has shown me the importance of fully accepting my identity and not worrying about the opinions of others. My faith is an integral part of who I am and it has given me strength and peace to be the best version of myself. In Merton’s prayer he says, “I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.” Merton confides in his prayer that he doesn’t know what the future holds, but he is certain that God will be his stronghold through all of his trials. No matter the hardships I have faced in college or will face in the future, I have peace knowing that it will all be okay.
I finally grasped that I was ready to graduate after my priest and mentor went out of his way to help me network for future job opportunities after I graduate. It made me realize that the time I have spent at Boise State has helped me build up my future. The communities I have been a part of and helped grow have been developing me up to something greater. What exactly, I have no idea. I think that’s okay. Some people know exactly what they want to do from when they are a child; however, the rest of us have to follow our heart and make incremental steps and see where that takes us. I don’t think we are supposed to know what we are going to do with our lives right now. Over time our desires change depending on our life circumstances and experiences, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. These communities that I have been apart of during my time in college have added to my invisible network that connects different parts of my life and enabled me to be more confident in what my future holds. Since I am graduating in the spring, I know that my network is important, and will continue to evolve as I get a new job or move to a new city.
Really my college experience boils down to how I am going to tell my story after I have left. Even now I have romanticized my classes and everything I have been through. I will justify the choices I have made or at least try to rationalize why I tried them in the first place. Robert Frost told it best when he wrote, “ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/ I took the one less traveled by,/ and that has made all the difference.” Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” retells a story about how the author was at a crossroads, and had to make a choice of where to go even though the paths were practically identical. This poem exemplifies how you tell your story after you make a decision. Frost makes his choice seem better in the stories he tells about it, and justifies the choice he made by making it seem like it has had a large impact on his life. No matter the experiences I have had; I will always stick by my choices and decisions with all of the justifications I can muster. From his story he is able to craft the identity he wants to present to his audience. I’m sure my story has glossed over some of the harder times, and highlighted the parts I want you to know about who I think I am. My college experience has helped craft my identity, but only a small fraction is able to come across.
College has shifted and expanded my worldview through the education I have received, the clubs I have taken part in, and the friends that have been by my side. These connections have influenced my life, and I don’t know where I would be without the support from my friends and mentors. All I can hope is that I continue to try to live my life full of meaning and purposeful decisions that leave at least a small shadow of a positive impact on other people and society.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What do you think it means to lead a significant life?
What are your opinions on the purpose of life?
What about when you add in more faith and religion into the equation?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Works Cited
Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Choosing." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 101-07. Print.
Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Living Like Weasels." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 298-301. Print.
Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "The Road Not Taken." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 458-59. Print.
Schwehn, Mark R., and Dorothy C. Bass. "Thoughts in Solitude." Leading Lives That Matter: What We Should Do and Who We Should Be. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub., 2006. 450. Print.
No comments:
Post a Comment