The Next Four Weeks

The Westgate Mall shooting delayed my trip to Kenya six weeks for security reasons. A terrible thing happened in the capital and I can’t help thinking:

“I just want to start my awesome Peace Corps adventure now!”

But I’m so thankful to have friends who give me reality checks. Some say:

“Everything happens for a reason.” While others say:

“You can still have meaningful experiences here before Kenya.”

They both hold some truth, but what are those meaningful experiences? I’ve already put my head in the Peace Corps game and now I need a new game plan for the next few weeks. How can I hope for meaning when I feel like I’m in limbo?

A friend sent me an article about meaning and happiness. Meaning and happiness seem exclusive from one another, but at the same time affect each other. For example, I’ve a lot of eggs in this Peace Corps basket. I want this experience to develop a lot of meaning in my life to the point where I feel comfortable seeking out experiences that make me happy.

This thinking may seem too linear and there’s obviously some overlap between meaning and happiness, but overall I see meaning as a requirement to finding happiness because having experiences that have meaning, like public service jobs, define who we are. Once we are defined, we’re able to stand on our own two feet, to make sound decisions by weighing the pros and cons, to practice empathy, and to know when to listen and when to talk.

How can we find happiness and do the things we really want if we don’t even know who we are first?

How can we seek out happiness if we first don’t know our own abilities and limits?

These meaningful experiences test our boundaries and let us know how well we function in different situations. And once we establish those boundaries, then we are able to stretch those boundaries with things that make us happy. We test our resiliency and expand our perspectives in hopes of widening those boundaries. We can’t test the strength of our resiliency if we’ve yet to establish the boundaries first.

So perhaps this waiting period is yet another meaningful link in the chain that defines who I am. Waiting requires flexibility and resilience. And if I want to widen my boundaries with things that make my happy as I hope to do, I have to practice these skills now. So yes, I can acknowledge that I’m impatient with the wait, but I also have to practice against the urge.