A Simple re-Quest

"Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives." - Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist, xi

We've all met bitter old people. My nightmare is becoming one of those. This summer, my nightmare became much more real as I worked in a world-class university for public health, my career of choice. My life took a dramatic change of course as I opened a PDF document as part of the thousands of pages of reading I was to do for my internship. Images and Reflections: Photography and Public Health was an incredibly insightful article published in a scholarly journal for my field and written by the chair of the department for which I was interning. I sent an email to Dr. Nigel Bruce and he enthusiastically replied. We shared a passion for both photography and public health. Over the summer, we worked together on developing a hypothetical university-level course on those two subjects. At the end of my internship, I had to conduct several interviews of public health professionals. Nigel told me that although he was happy enough (as the department chair of the second-best public health program in the world), if he were to do it over again he would instead explore his interest in photography. Red flag.

Why, you may wonder, if I love photography so much would I choose to study public health? I am pragmatic. And I'm not alone.

Oscar Wilde said: "Each man kills the thing he loves." And it's true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal - when it was only a step away.

This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you're here. -Coelho, xii

If there's one secret I may not have outed yet in the class, it would be that I am an incense-burning hippie. Hence, these words strike a chord with me. I love the idea that finding our personal calling in life and following it isn't just nice, it's the ultimate contribution we can make to humanity. This, then, was my intellectual and spiritual quest: to find my personal calling.

It may seem obvious to you where this is going. And yet it has been quite a rollercoaster for me. I have considered graduating and trying to find a job working in refugee health, taking premed courses and becoming a midwife so that my utility in third world countries is increased, and finishing out both of my minors before leaving BYU. These all seemed to be fairly reasonable, relatively safe options for my life. Convincing yourself that applying for the photo program is a good idea when you are already in your victory lap of your undergraduate, however, is much more difficult.

Pascal once said in Pensees that, roughly translated, after meditating on all of the many horrible things that exist and occur as a result of mankind's folly, he had decided all of these things were the result of one single problem: people have forgotten how to spend time in solitary introspection.

I applied this to my personal quest, which was difficult as I am naturally a very social creature and dislike being alone. However, I found myself processing many intersections that had happened in my life, including the arguably chance meeting with a street performer who inspired me to follow my dream at any cost by showing me that success is a combination of personality and positive conspiracy of the universe. This one multifaceted episode took me the entire semester to dissect, and I have yet to finish. However, I feel that I've gained much from the process itself.

And so it is that through a more thorough exploration of my options, frequent and deep introspection, and meditative reflection, I have arrived at the end of the semester and this course. After all this and more flip-flopping than candidates in the presidential primaries, I have decided to apply to the photo program. Meetings with faculty members have proved encouraging and I have a decent chance at getting in. My intellectual and spiritual quest, then, is changing. Now I must understand how and why to follow my calling in life, while keeping in mind a somewhat worrisome but ultimately encouraging quote (again from Coelho):

We who fight for our dream, suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we cannot fall back on the old excuse: "Oh, well, I didn't really want it anyway." We do want it and know that we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then, we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favor, even though we may not understand how.

And with that, I leave you - may you find and follow your personal calling in life as well.