Growing Up

 Just going to ramble here:

When I'm facing the computer screen, I'll briefly blank out - like a text cursor waiting for input. During one of these idle moments, I had the opportunity to recall who I was and how I related to the people around me. 

I noticed that in my search for purpose, I was adamant to distinguish myself from other people. I was driven to excel and to straddle the bar that differentiated the mediocre performers from the deserving. Anyone below that bar was unworthy and frankly, would have endangered their clients' safety. That was how I perceived the world when I was 18.

When I graduated and passed the nursing licensure exam, I realized that I was as bare and innocent as a baby. Ashamed of this truth, I would apply for jobs with my head bowed and my nods meek. It's as if I were holding on to my blankie, with nothing to shield me from the naked truth.

If there's anything I habitually do when I'm lost, it's asking questions. 

I would strike up conversations with anybody - my fingers restless to tap and hit send. A curt reply would trigger questions. It wasn't that I was impatient, but I had been very eager. And in the quest to seek answers or to find a vision others could share with me, I drifted afloat.

I had no one I could look up to, no one who could keep the embers from dying. With the world passing me by so quickly, I don't think anyone cared.

And then I entered Law School.

In retrospect, that had been a mistake. Because in between semesters, the only habit I made was to remain undisciplined and unfocused. I relied on intellect to get me through and it hadn't gotten me that far. Law school taught me that persistence and consistency are the keys to success.

Intellect? That's only an unfair advantage.

I had identified myself with my brain that it had been excruciating to be thought of as a learner. Don't get me wrong, I love to learn. But law school didn't throw a bone for every correct answer you gave. It lashed a whip for honest admissions like "I don't know" or "I hadn't been able to read that case". It was painful - underperforming like that.

The embers had died down. 

The only thing that stoked the phoenix inside was a change in mindset.

By the end of this semester, I will have had been able to learn this (the Constitution, these number of cases, you get the gist). I may not be able to master it as well as my professors, but I will pass at bare minimum and I will get better over time, so much so, that by the end of four years, I will be leagues better than how I started.

That worked.

What drove me? The urgency to help.

When your ego is crushed the way it had been mine, you'll no longer identify yourself with anything. You won't qualify yourself based on a performance standard, or a set of nouns/adjectives. You won't give conditioned on the minor premise. You will understand that

THE SELF IS FLUID.

You are a current of energy - moving, dynamic and unforgiving. And as Marcus Aurelius has put it, you, like nature, can take everything within it that seems broken, old and useless, transform it into itself and make new things from it.

Given the possibilities of what you can do and what kind of person you can become, who do you choose to be?