Why This Summer Was The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me

I've told people all my life to live for the moment. Stop accepting unhappiness now, just for the thought of things getting better later. Stop working a job you hate just so that you can have money for the future. Money is meant to be spent, not saved, right? What's the point of having a lot of money in the bank if you never spend it? It always seemed like such an odd concept to live a life unsatisfied, only for the hope that one day you'll get to do what you really want. Just go make your life what you want it to be.

Bellingham Bay, Summer 2012

So what do you do when you have no choice but to hurry up and wait? When you've followed the steps to your dreams, but your dream can't come true until January? What do you do when you're trying to put your life back on course after 6 months of wasted time doing less than nothing, and you want to be passionate about something, but you find yourself stuck in a strange waiting pattern?

It can be argued that I've been on summer vacation since March, which sounds great initially, and it is great... initially. But there comes a point when you want more in life than to work a shitty job, get off work, go downtown to party all night long, head home at 2am with great friends, watch Planet Earth all night, and do it all again the next day. But this summer was weird. It was a summer of life lessons, best friends, great memories, nights I can't remember, zero accomplishments, major steps backwards, and an extremely vague idea of where I wanted my life to be going.

"But what about Peace Corps?" you ask. Well sometimes, you just need to nearly lose it all in order to realize that you actually care about something. True, this was a dream I came up with back in 9th grade, with extravagant desires to travel anywhere that wasn't named Covington, but without the funds to do so. It seemed like the perfect solution; just let the government pay for me to travel. But six and a half years later, it's difficult to describe what my thoughts were on the matter. I don't mean to say that I didn't want to go... Rather, it just wasn't tangible enough to grasp. I was applying because everyone was telling me it was what I was supposed to be doing; I was doing my volunteering because that's what I was told I should be doing; I was telling people I was excited, because I felt like that's how I was expected to feel. By the time I graduated, I honestly couldn't tell if I was pursuing Peace Corps because I wanted to, or because it was just what everyone expected of me. Peace Corps was, at a minimum, at least 9 months away, and never seemed like something that would actually happen in the end. It wasn't tangible enough to live for.

So where did this all change? I went from living for everyone else to living for myself... but how? A series of poor life choices, bad luck on Friday the 13th, and a summer's worth of selfish living all crashed down into a single night of life changing realizations. By the next morning, I knew I wanted Peace Corps, but beyond that, I needed Peace Corps. I needed to feel like my life was headed somewhere important again, and by nearly losing Peace Corps, I suddenly realized where I would be without it. I would be exactly where I had been since I graduated, doing the same thing, every night, with the same people. That thought alone terrified me.

Rabat, Morocco 

That was the moment I started living my life for a reason again. It was a defining point in my life, and, short of my time spent in Kenya, it was the best thing that's ever happened to me. It's tough though, to put things back in place, point my life in the direction I wanted again, and feel like everything was falling into place so fast, only to fall back into a waiting period. I'm back here now, waiting not very patiently for January, and trying so hard to hold onto reality just long enough to catch that jet to Morocco.

This isn't to say that I haven't enjoyed what I've been doing, or who I've been with. On the contrary in fact, I've loved every minute of it. I've made some of the best friends of my life this summer, and had incredible experiences. But I forgot that they weren't the entirety of my existence. So, I suppose what I'm trying to say here is this: it's important to live in the moment, it is. But it's also important to remember that while you must take every opportunity, you also need to make sure you don't miss out on something more important just for that one crazy night right now.