So What’ll You Do Now?

After 14 months in India, an intense year of service and discovery, and living and working in the most rural area I have ever been to, I have returned back to the United States of America (YOU-ES-AY). This has included returning to the beacon of light that is suburbia and to the constant questions of: “What are you going to do now? How does this all fit into your career?” Inevitably, the advice comes that enough is enough already, and it’s time to settle down…

It hasn’t always been easy having the same conversations, being asked the same questions, telling the same stories. It’s hard trying to express depths of emotion, by request. It’s not something that can be switched on and off. And there are times when I can’t really go there.

The challenge is getting it across in a way that isn’t regurgitating a myth I have created in my head, but more so being aware that I actually did this, and it has had a profound impact on me. It’s hard to be able to switch on something so enormous, and dynamic, especially when it’s something you are still processing. My answer has been to live in the present so completely. But what has grounded me these past two weeks is knowing what I have just done, where I am coming from, and where I want to go from here.

So what next? Beyond the clichéd answers of jobs, and GREs, and grad school applications. Beyond the compost pile out back and trying to live all the thoughts that perspective brings, the real answer is one that goes to the heart of the question. That is if you really wanna go there. So in the words of Bob:

I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it,
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it,
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.