On Top of the World

I’ve been planning out my senior year since before I was a freshman at Notre Dame. I was going to be an RA. I was going to do a senior year internship for ACE. I was going to be president of my choir. If you know me, or even if you’re just a regular follower of this blog, you’ll know that I am a planner. I love to plan - trips, dream schools, unwritten novels- but especially, I love to plan my future. And senior year was going to be the culmination of my planning. It was going to be the time when all my years of work were finally going to pay off. My freshman and sophomore years, I looked up to my RAs, the interns I knew at ACE, and the presidents of my choir. I wanted to be them. I wanted to be someone who people looked up to.

The fall of my junior year came around with deep anticipation. I wrote application essays. I nitpicked my resume. I spent two hours one evening recording a campaign speech for my choir presidency. I spent afternoons with my notebook, writing out notes about each opportunity. I nervously sat through interviews. And I prayed. I prayed so much, probably more than I had in a very long time. I wanted this to be the perfect senior year. I wanted to be a role model. And I wanted God to want it for me, too. When the final submit button was pressed and the last Hail Mary said, I began to wait.

Two months ago, at 6AM, using Megabus Wifi in Edinburgh, on a trip I was taking all by myself, I opened the e-mail from my AR. With that dreaded lurch, the feeling like your stomach is dropping out from beneath you, I learned that I would not be an RA my senior year. I wasn’t terribly surprised, my dorm had over 30 girls applying for 7 spots, but as much as I tried not to be, I was disappointed. So, as I drowsily staggered off the bus and into the rainy streets of Edinburgh, I decided the best thing to do would be to climb a mountain. It wasn’t a terribly huge hill, but I still felt successful when I made my way to the very top. It was early and deserted and I expected  to cry, but instead, I was in awe. From the mountain top, I watched the sunrise over the harbor of Edinburgh, and all of a sudden, my rejection seemed smaller. Who was I to feel sad over this little thing, when I was on top of a mountain? I was in a city I had never seen before, all by myself (in the freezing rain) and I felt far away from the world I used to know. My problems seemed miniscule. I took deep breaths and told myself that when I came down from the mountain, I wasn’t allowed to be upset anymore. I had one day in Edinburgh and I was going to make the most of it. I came back down and had perspective.

A month later came my second disappointing e-mail. I found out that despite my campaign efforts, I would be choir secretary instead of president. This news came somewhere in between traveling to Amsterdam, Rome, and Barcelona while I was trying to balance schoolwork and 10 hour days of shooting a student film. In the rush of travel and filming, I found that I simply didn’t have time to be sad. I had to treasure each of these moments and not let the bad news bring me down. After all, I told myself, the ACE internship is the one I wanted the most, and that was still out there. Who knew what still could happen? I resigned to keep hoping for that.

This past Friday, I received my e-mail from ACE. The third “no.” And to be honest, a lot of me wanted to fall apart. I quietly left my hotel room in Greece,  went on to the terrace, and promptly called my mom and cried to her.

When you get rejected, it doesn’t feel like one rejection, but everything you’ve ever been rejected from all at once. Not getting this internship felt like not getting the RA position. It felt like opening the waitlisted letter for Notre Dame. It felt like my first real heartbreak. It felt like not getting the role I wanted in my high school’s play. It felt like not getting the summer jobs that I wanted. It felt like the e-mail saying that I had been waitlisted for the Paris Study Abroad program. It was fell like all of it, all at once. It felt like being broken.[KM1] 

“There is something wrong with me, Mom,” I whispered, “I am never picked first. I am always the second choice. I am always the one who doesn’t get it.”

But here I was in Santorini, Greece, one of the most beautiful islands of the world, actual real life paradise. And as terrible and horrible as I felt, I didn’t want to miss a moment. So, I did what I did in Edinburgh when I was disappointed- I climbed a mountain.

In three hours, I hiked from the ancient city of Fira to the equally historic city of Oia. It involved hiking up two mountains, past caves and fields of flowers, and even in some places where the trail totally disappeared. From the top, I saw the caldera, a space which had once occupied a single island, but through volcanic eruptions had changed into several islands and is now home to some of the most beautiful sunsets in the world. It was standing here, taking in how God had taken this act of destruction and made it even more beautiful than it had been before, that I felt myself once again feel the serenity of perspective. God made this huge, thriving, breathing world full of more people and places than we can see in a lifetime. But God also made me. And in making me, he made plans for me, plans that I can’t even begin to understand. Here I am, on top of this mountain in Greece, some place I’d never thought I’d be, but God led me here. And he will continue to lead me where I am supposed to be. My semester abroad has taken me to new heights (literally) and to unexpected places and people. If God can know me so well to lead me there, who knows where God will lead me next. And this means that God is going to lead me to a senior year that is exactly where I am supposed to be. So what if I am not living the life of the people I once looked up to? I am ready to become someone I look up to, by happily embracing each simple moment of every day. My new course for life is simply being present in the moment I am in. And in that presence, to find perspective. I decided it was high time that I leave the planning to God and I settle back to enjoy the view.

So yes, in some tiny ways, my life is uncertain. I don’t know what I am doing next year. Or after I graduate. But it’s okay, because I’m watching the sunrise on the mountains in Scotland. I’m watching my favorite ballet company perform in London. I’m walking across canals in Amsterdam. I’m going to Easter Sunday Mass at the Vatican. I’m starring in movies in Paris. I’m watching my favorite musician perform in Barcelona. I’m climbing up to castles in Germany. And here in Greece, I am sailing in the Mediterranean. I’m scaling volcanoes. I’m on top of mountains. And, right here, in this very moment, I’m on top of the world.