There
is something my husband says that I find . . . not inspiring, but
grounding, because it’s true: Often we don’t want to engage in a
particular activity, but want to be able to look back and say that we
have done that activity. This thought helps me prioritize my activities
and distinguish between what I want to do and what I want to have done.
(Anybody out there have a list of life goals they wrote in high school?
Mine includes: skinny dip, write a book, act in a big theater
production, adopt a child, and meet a famous person. Out of this list,
there are very few items I think I would actually enjoy doing. Most are
just things I feel like I ought to have done to be a well-lived person
or I feel like I’m supposed to enjoy because . . . some reason.)
Foreign travel
is one of those activities that I want to have done, and I struggle
with actually enjoying doing it. I love to think back to times I
experienced anything new. Strangeness has a powerful effect on me. When I
am surrounded by unknowns, I tend to reinvent myself and see my life
through a new perspective. However, while traveling, I struggle to find
the balance between peaceful reinvention of the self and stress in the
overwhelming unknown uncontrollables.
I’m currently listening to this book: http://www.hsperson.com/pages/hsp.htm
and am viewing every area of my life through the lenses of a Highly
Sensitive Person. In case you don’t feel like clicking on the link: a
highly sensitive person is one who is overly aware of stimuli and faces
unique challenges and insights in everyday life because of those
sensitivities. I self-identify as a highly-sensitive person for several
reasons but the relevant ones for this post are my tendencies to feel
overwhelmed by loud noises, crowds, and spontaneous decisions.
As
mentioned in a prior post, I have several food intolerances and follow
the Paleo diet as closely as is reasonable for time, effort, and
economic restraints. I have yet to experience foreign traveling in light
of this particular challenge but I imagine it wouldn’t be easy.
It
doesn’t seem like traveling would be a great fit for me, despite my
desire to have a “has traveled” notch on my life story. And yet, I do
plan to travel next summer (hopefully) to Europe. This journey is much
more meaningful to me knowing the barriers I will personally need to
overcome to make it happen. You might even say it’s part of my
philosophy.
When
a person is faced with adversity of any kind, there seem to be two
popularly identified responses: those who overcome and those who submit.
This has always seemed trite and shallow to me, however. I don’t see
value in the act of overcoming itself. It seems that attitude serves no
purpose other than to say “Look what I did! It’s so awesome because no
one thought I could.” I kind of hear some “Na na-na na-na na’s” in the
background.
My
purpose for overcoming my HSP-ness and food issues is not so I can
prove the strength of my character, but because there are really
valuable things to be done in this world and not doing them because of
“enter your personal challenge here” is simply not a good excuse. If I
don’t do something that I perceive as a really important action, then it
will be because it simply didn’t need to be done by me or was not a
valuable use of my time.
Let
me try to be more specific. I really care about relationships. I love
people and getting to know them. Recently, it occurred to me that when
someone doesn’t tell me personal and vulnerable information about him or
herself, I start to feel very insecure. Even more recently, it occurred
to me that I could ask for that information and have begun to do so.
The
first majority of my life I didn’t like to put myself out there. At
first I was shy, then I was just awkward and didn’t know how to say
things I wanted to say. Last, I realized how easily overwhelmed I
sometimes become and avoided conversation due to the annoying complexity
of it all. None of these are good reasons to back out of building
relationship. So, I do it anyway.
Another
way to look at it is in the realm of fear. Growing up, it was the thing
to do to jump off cliffs into appropriately deep sections of Missouri’s
scenic river ways. I really wanted to know what it was like but was
afraid. I was afraid it would hurt, that I would hit a rock, that my
bathing suit would come off . . . But, for a long time, I did it anyway.
I knew I would always wonder what it felt like if I didn’t. (And I
jumped multiple times because that feeling is something only real in the
moment and harder to remember afterward.) Jumping off big rocks may not
seem like a very existential activity but it served a valuable purpose
in my development. It taught me that if something is really important to
me, then I need to do it.
If it is important to you, do it. That is really the only good reason to do anything.
Let’s
bring God into it for a sec. (I should do some Biblical research about
this, soon, and give God the real center stage in a blog post.) A common
question for Christians is: “What am I supposed to do with my life?”
It’s a hard question for many reasons including the obvious fact that
there isn’t a simple answer to such a broad question. Then, there’s the
overly simplified response of pointing out the places God gives orders
like the 10 Commandments or Sermon on the Mount but which do not take
into consideration the many varying factors of job, marriage, financial
security, politics, yada, yada, yada. But, the truth is, no one really
knows their purpose in the world because we’re all still living it and
everyone’s different.
My
only comfortable answer to this question is the delightfully vague
“Purpose is seeking God and doing what we feel like He’s telling us to
do.” My point in this is to say that I believe God makes things seem
more important to us if we ask Him to show us. But then, we have to
choose to act on whatever it is He shows us.
So,
I chose to prioritize relationship, despite the headaches of
communication snags, insecurities, and differing opinions it brings.
Even when I don’t know what to say, I choose to be near people. And if I
happen to feel overwhelmed, I don’t beat myself up about it because I
know having time to myself will help me be more able to engage with
others later. And, I know that I am capable of interacting with people
if the moment is a really important one.
I
choose to travel because I have learned that new experiences help me
accept feelings of discomfort (both physical and cultural) that lead to
later endurance, broaden my perspective by challenging my preconceived
knowledge of the world, and inspire an adventurous spirit that spurs me
to ask and wonder more.
Foreign travel is really important to me so I will do it.
It
occurs to me that most write about travel with the intention of singing
its praises and I just wrote about how it’s a burden to overcome.
Welcome to my world. :-)
