{Be}

I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about my future. Mostly because my future is approaching faster than I would like it to, but otherwise I think about what I don't have planned out. I think a lot about what comes after 10:00 am on May 2nd. Quite honestly, I have no idea what I'm doing or what's going on. When people ask what I want to do with my life, I wouldn't be surprised if I stayed & waited tables in small town Nebraska for the next 100 years. In a way, my future is exciting, but in another way, it is terrifying. I'm scared of not having a plan. I'm scared of being alone in the adult world. I've been thinking about who I will be, what I will be, where I will be, & what I will be doing. The word "be" scares me.

My whole life, especially in the past several years, that word has been the name that has defined me, it has held a sort of premise of a nickname in my life. But now, I come across an identity crisis with being 'Bee.' I thought my life would be on this set plan; a perfectly timed out & detailed scale & schedule. I thought that I'd be older & that, somehow, I'd be wise beyond my years. That I'd have some sort of sense of what it really means to be an adult. Well I'm young, poor, under-experienced in the "life" department, & a little clueless of how to manage myself in a big world full of opportunities. Opportunities to make choices & to make mistakes. But what I didn't expect was to not even have a Plan B when my story tale Plan A didn't follow through like I would have liked it to. Now I'm forced with this struggle of being something that I have absolutely no idea how to be.

It's funny, you know, how a simple word, with only two letters, can scare you more than almost any other word scripted from the remaining twenty-four letters in our English alphabet. See, I thought I had it all planned out, drawn out, & worked out, but now I don't want to get out. I'm faced every single day with the ominous question of: now what do you want to be? The possibilities of being something are endless, most often rewarding, but I'm too scared to take a leap of faith & dive into something that may be wrong. I say I don't want to continue with school, because let's be honest, I hate it. & though I am more than thankful for my education, I think it's time for me to turn in my last assignment. If only extra-curricular activities track was an actual degree plan, but I guess communications is pretty close in the running with them. There's thoughts raging through my mind like: Maybe I picked the wrong school from the start. Maybe I decided on the wrong major. Maybe I just wasted thousands of dollars to just want to start all over. All of these 'maybes' are freaking me out.

My main struggle is thinking that my non-existent Plan B isn't going to work out.

Most kids graduate college in their early twenties. They may claim to live an adult-like life, but still resemble a child in more ways than they would an adult. Some still may be lacking in the area of good decisions. Some may have never had the chance to be their own adult because their parents have been feeding them like baby birds their whole lives. Most of the time, a college graduate is sent out into the world still resembling a child, but fitting into an adult-sized body. They think they can take on a full adult life load; a family, a career, bills, a home, the works. But the truth is, we don't even know what we're doing out here! We plaster a smile on our faces & grind our teeth at night. Call our best friends crying & then turn around to tell our parents that we are doing just fine. It's a class act that we have learned to master. Some of us, grow up & out of it, while others wallow & grieve while digging themselves into a miserable hole.

The struggle & issue with the 'be' in being is that we don't understand it's full meaning. We don't quite understand the full potential those two letters can carry. The true definition is doing, not being. Yes, you may be a human being, but it is your human doings that will take you places. That will accomplish tasks, & that will help your life to move forward. Your human doing will be the result of your being.

So while I fret & while I worry, I'm wasting time. No, I don't have a Plan B or a Plan C, or a plan for any of the rest of the alphabet, in any language. Sitting around, pulling my hair out, & stressing over things that won't be so important in the long run, won't result in me getting things done.

"Come to me, all you who are weary & burdened, & I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28

Peace & love.
B.