Today In Awesome, folks, I wanna talk about a lot of vague things.
Awesomeness in general and how you can achieve it.
For the last ten months, yours truly has been traveling the nation
serving in AmeriCorps. For those that don't know, that's a national service
program that takes young confused rebels like us and gives em a uniform, a
15-passenger van, and a purpose, in the hopes of "getting things done."
I learned a lot about myself. I met some amazing people. I saw
parts of the country I didn't know I longed for. I received the opportunity to
do work that actually meant a damn-- a refreshing break from the dregs of
menial service jobs that were exclusively featured on my unimpressive resume.
I did things that added up to so much more than hamburgers and
hotdogs, more than bottlecaps and barfights, more than cleaning the trash from
someone else's plate.
I
found everything I'd been looking for, and a few things I didn't know I was
looking for. Let's take a look at some of those.
You're
a lot more adaptable than you think.
I considered myself already an adaptable person, but I didn't see
realize the depth of that flexibility until I saw my teammates struggling
around me. Whether it was the ability to sleep in a busted cot for months on
end, or coping with the anxiety of being separated from everyone you know and
love. There were times that I was surprised by my own fortitude. And then I was
surprised again when those struggling teammates overcame those obstacles. You'd
be shocked both by how strong you may already be, or by the speed at which you
can become strong.
Faced with adversity, we all became stronger. A friend of mine
once told me, "Things don't happen to you. They happen for you,"
And I learned, first on a small scale, and then in the big picture, just how
accurate that piece of fortune cookie wisdom is.
Before I'd left, I was in a pretty sour spot in my life. I'd
gotten unceremoniously fired from a high-paying job that I'd once put in a 100
hour workweek with, I caught my girlfriend of three years seeing another guy on
my birthday, and I was in the middle of a crisis. I was terrified that no
matter how hard that I tried, I would never amount to anything. That I was
destined for a life of scrubbing dishes and wasting talent. That I would never
be happy.
I joined the program and I had never been happier, but it wasn't
till I faced a particularly feisty sandwich that things had been put in
perspective for me.
Yes, a sandwich.
It was an angry, rushed morning. I was running five minutes late,
my whole team was waiting for me in the van, and I was just trying to pack a
god damned lunch. This sandwich had to have been the reason Murphy came up with
his famous law. The cheese wouldn't come off in one piece, The condiments
sputtered and weezed in shotgun blasts. The lunchmeat refused to come off the
stupid wad cleanly (what is your GAME, Big Lunchmeat!? What gives with the
wadding!?). And to top it off, it wouldn't fit neatly in my ziploc. I
resorted to stuffing the fucker into the bag with all the grace of Chris Farley
at a pie eating contest. I roared at the deformed clump of sandwich that I'd
fisted into the bag with intense, primal anger, before punctuating my brutal
victory with a slap of the sandwich against the counter just to show the
sandwich who was boss, but things didn't go exactly to plan. The lunchmeat
exploded from the back of the bag and defied gravity to land directly on me.
Defeated, I gave up the fight, neatly stuffing the mangled ingredients into a
new bag, and calmly heading down to meet my team. "Nate. Why are you
covered in mayonnaise?" They asked, to which I couldn't think of an answer
that wouldn't get me laughed at. So I embraced the hilarity of the situation, and
they loved it. And I learned.
You can't really change the terrible things that happen to you.
The only thing you can change is how you'll react to those kinds of situations.
Will you break? Or will you turn your failed sandwich into a salad?
By
finding true love, I learned to stop looking for it.
I never knew what love was. To me, it was just this thing people
pretended to believe in for tax reasons. I'd had long term relationships in the
past. We frequently exchanged the phrase with perfunctory meaninglessness. It
became a filler phrase. Something you said when you didn't enjoy the silence.
It never occurred to me that I may not actually love that person. I just
thought all lasting relationships were with people you were just okay with.
Like finding a decent roommate, but with more kissing and fighting. When I lost
these relationships, I became morose, but I later realized that it wasn't
because I loved them, it was because I was used to them. Or
that I was afraid I wouldn't find anyone else better. I know now that we were
never good picks for each other.
But then I found it. The actual thing. A connection to someone so
profoundly deep, that you have to catch your breath after picturing their eye
color for too long. It was so exponentially deeper than anything I'd ever felt
before, that I wondered how I'd survived my life for so long without sharing it
with them. Not someone you can pretend is perfect, but has flaws that
compliment your own weaknesses, becoming a strength when both of you join
forces. I couldn't be with this person with life in the way, which was
agonizing, but I can take solace in that I know what love actually feels like,
and that I will see when I'm entering a toxic relationship, or just a
relationship with zero chemistry. I've reached a point in my life where I don't
need a relationship to make me whole, and I'm completely happy just being me,
working on myself, improving on all of my flaws. Maybe someday that person will
come find me. But at least I know that the real thing is worth waiting a long
time for. And trust me folks, they really are.
I learned that my prior engagements were much less healthy or
normal than I'd believed while in them. I learned that it was okay to be
single. I learned that I was worth more.
Find
your inspiration, and success feels like a downhill sprint.
I mentioned before how I was trapped in a cycle of jobs of varying
paycheck caliber that were all crappy in the same intangible way. At the time,
I thought I'd moved up in the world from mopping floors at a gas station for
under-the-table wages, to catering for bigwigs at a ballpark for nearly twice
the rate. But really, all that changed was the paycheck. The work was
soul-less, often demeaning, and at the end of the day was a meaningless
extension of an unfulfilling life. I was paid more, so I could afford more, so
I spent more. An apartment, a car, distractions, all with the hollow
self-assurance that I was saving up for college. I knew I fundamentally didn't
enjoy the job, but it was the means to an end, which was a lie. Without so much
as even a passive aggressive text message, I was wadded up and thrown away by
them. Turned out I meant about as much to that company as they meant to me. My
nest egg went towards keeping the lights on while I frantically searched for
the next option, and before I knew it, my meager college savings well was dry,
and I found I'd only been passing the time for three years.
By chance, I happened into AmeriCorps, and lucked into doing what
I'd only talked about in vague notions. Traveling, writing, working with FEMA,
working with the Red Cross. I met people who had survived tragedies. I helped
put people's lives back together. They had me working with FEMA's External
Affairs department, taking photos and getting interviews, writing articles,
acting as a journalist, essentially. I was enamored with the role. I found a
well of dedication that I'd never seen from myself in my work or school
careers, and it was because I actually gave a shit about what I was doing.
Here, I'd been all but convinced I was just a lazy sleazeball, but really I'd
simply never found what motivated me to make that work feel effortless. Don't
get me wrong, the work itself was long and grueling, but to convince myself to
put in all the diligent hours when most people race the clock to get home was
not only effortless, but it took concerted willpower to stop working
long enough to eat.
I loved it, is what I'm saying.
And it's my belief that everyone has that thing they care about
enough to do well past five o' clock. Know yourself and what you want. Spring
for it. And never stop fighting to make it happen.
