As I'm writing, one of our betta fish (thus, the awful pun that is the title of this post) is shooting across his bowl at high enough speeds for me to hear him. I'm sitting about 12 feet away. Little guy is booking it. And what does he find on the other side of the bowl? Nothing. There's not glimpse of disappointment or confusion. Just a launching spurt of energy, a small splash, and a quick turnaround. What I see in this fish right now is a whole lot of myself.
Maybe he was feeling confined and thought that his best chances of escape were these flailing bursts that turn him into a little fish-bullet. I've been there. My roommate has to constantly reconstruct my undergrad experience for me because I shot through so much of it that I really can't remember what happened when. I finished in the traditional 4 years, but within those years I had the most substantial of my life experiences against a kaleidoscopic backdrop of student organizations, jobs, academic commitments, and personal growth. Much of it was involuntary and totally out of my control. But a lot of it was also my attempt to push out of where I was - mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - in desperate bursts very much like our little bowl-bound friend. I wasn't unhappy or running from anything necessarily, I just felt the overwhelming freedom that most newly released creatures feel when the cage door of adolescence shoots up. So, instead of wild parties, passionate love affairs, or Lifetime-worthy drama, I jumped head first into the waves of more savory endeavors. I waded into the waters of student leadership, social clubs, campus ministries, and academic involvement. By the fall semester of my senior year, I was involved in half a dozen organizations, taking 22 hours of classes (where's a time-turner when you need one?), and working 2 jobs. Wading turned into swimming. Swimming turned into snorkeling. Snorkeling turned into deep-sea, no-tank diving in the San Andreas Fault. I was engulfed.
There was a point during which I spent most of my spare time apologizing for sending an assignment to the right professor but for the wrong class or for being late to one meeting or another. But like any challenging time, I learned more than I ever had before, and not just in class. Actually, I learned the most outside of class. I attended a small, public, liberal arts college. There was a ton of overlap in my daily life. I often tell my friends from larger colleges, if you did anything at my undergrad, you did everything at my undergrad. They should award degrees for plate-spinning. Now that I look at the bowl, our little sea sprinter is resting calmly on his decorative glass stones. Not just because he's just plum tuckered out (proof I'm from the South), but because it necessary. I had to take time to just be. In these times of quiet, I sat under trees and talked with those closest to me. We forged relationships in laughter, sadness, joy, and quiet. Often at 2 in the morning buy, hey, you take what you can get.
I'm in a very different season of my life now compared to where I was this time last year. I'm not rushing headlong into the waters of May, praying to survive student teaching. I'm not rushing anywhere. I'm less involved, or maybe just involved in less, than I have been in the past 4 years. It's doesn't feel natural at all and I'm hoping to find at least some puddles to splash around in this semester. But compared to the fleeting torpedo that my life was in my undergrad years, I look a lot more like a grad school jellyfish now (metaphorically speaking, of course). That's not to say I'm not busy. I definitely am. But I am no longer in a fish bowl of opportunities just begging for me to jump in. There are many doors open before me now, but I can't choose them all. It's very different and I am adjusting. My Creator is preparing me, I think. What for, I'm not yet sure. But there is something in the works and so I am just putting one paw in front of the other until I get where I'm going.
I'd like to end some of my posts with questions because other folks do that and other folks are better at what they do than I am. Where are you in your life now? Are you torpedoing through your fish bowl or floating in a clear current? Maybe you're somewhere in the middle like me? I'd love to hear about it.
Be kind to each creature,
Noelle
