A Place for Reconsideration

Well, lots of people have told me to start a blog, so I finally decided I would give it a whirl. My hope is that it will help me gain some clarity, and encourage me to reflect more thoroughly on what I see and what I do, and ways I choose to be in the world. Maybe, just maybe, it will be relevant to others, especially young people, who are trying desperately to make sense of this upside-down world we live in, and travel a path that is meaningful, personally fulfilling, and contributes to the restoration of people and the planet.

For starters, some background:

I feel young, very young indeed. I am twenty three years old, but feel like I am just beginning in a way. I graduated from the University of Toronto this past June, with a B.A. in Environment and Society. I learned a lot there, but mostly wanted that portion of my education to be over, so I could start the rest of my life, and be in a position to put things other than my academics first. Now that I can, I am finding it to be much more challenging than I ever anticipated.

I supposed you could say I am looking for a job. But really, its turning out to be much more than that. I finally have enough time and space to really think hard about and explore WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE. Now I know that I will only really find this out over time and through experience, if I'm that lucky. But I can understand that intellectually and still need to try as hard as I can, right now, to decipher my values, gifts, interests, and what constitutes a good, balanced life in my opinion, in order to make informed, intentional decisions.

I guess I took on this process seriously a few months ago, while working on a quiet farm and traveling on the west coast, but in the past few weeks, since returning to the city, I have started to combine this internal project with taking external action.

At first, I was frustrated and a bit angry that "my education" didn't prepare me more for this next phase in my life. Why don't they make you think more about these looming life questions in college, before you are done and vulnerable? Why don't they help you look harder inside? But that frustration soon passed. I realized that the point of university is to teach you other things, and maybe even help you find the right questions to ask. Now I am feeling very grateful for having a chance to entertain these moral deliberations with my full attention, and also wishing to high heaven I had more distractions from them.

So, to recap, I am done with undergrad, don't have a job, and have too much free-time (otherwise, how could I possibly have a post this long, or a blog at all, right?). But I am trying to take advantage of this unique situation of not being really busy to think hard, sit with my feelings, talk to people, look into various opportunities, and find some meaningful work. And not get depressed. Transitions are beautiful monsters, aren't they?

Most importantly I think: I am experiencing the apparently normal confusion and existential dilemmas of a recent grad looking for a job in combination with extreme sensitivity to mounting social and ecological crises. So in addition to feeling inexperienced and a bit lost, I feel a great sense of urgency to get to work right away, and concentrate my energies and skills where they can be of use most. I think that I am at a point in my life where I am asking important questions about what right livelihood is, but so are a lot of other people the world over, because the answers we have relied on for the past few decades (really much longer) clearly aren't working anymore.

Maybe if I document and examine my journey closely, and share it, it will help.

In closing: According to Paul Hawken in Blessed Unrest, "inspiration is not garnered from the recitation of what is flawed; it resides, rather, in humanity's willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. 'Consider' (con sidere) means 'with the stars'; reconsider means to rejoin the movement and cycle of heaven and life." (4)

More to come soon.