Vibrant Living

So this is life after college.

I have to be honest, I love the deepness of it. There are simultaneously really hard parts to this change and really unique and wonderful parts to it. While all of the adjusting is difficult—working a full-time, eight-hour-day, five-days-a-week job, learning how to go to bed early so I don’t have to drink two and a half thermoses of coffee while at work, and trying to keep up and learn the rules of a fast-paced communications profession—it’s really beautiful too.

Growing up, I was always told to enjoy being a kid. “You don’t want to be an adult. It’s just loads of responsibility and bills. Now, go out and play with the other children.” It was the same before I graduated. People would tell me to enjoy my college years while they lasted. They’re the best time of your LIFE. This always made me sad because I knew that each day was slowly slipping away, and I would (apparently) never be this happy again. Life was a box of rocks after school.

Yes, being an adult entails a lot of tasks and disciplines. But being an adult also means more time to create–it means a couple hours by the fire with a blank pad of paper and zero guilt of wasted time. There’s room to make that lemon lavender tart you pinned on Pinterest, and there’s time to have a slow and leisurely breakfast with your best friend. You certainly don’t stop feeling–if anything you feel even more and begin to figure out more. It’s hard but a good hard. Something like what I would imagine a week at a monastery to be. Or like fasting. One thing is for sure, I have found little comfort in anything but the deep and peaceful love of Christ. Through that lens, I can experience everything in such an amazingly calm and more vibrant way.

I’ve decided I want to take each moment slowly, carefully, and intentionally. It is a New Year’s resolution of mine, if you will. Or more so a new season of life proposition. I think of it like that scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts travels to Italy simply to experience the food and the passion of the culture (if you haven’t seen it, there are many clips on YouTube). She’s sitting by herself in a beautiful outdoor cafe watching the Italian people around her. Then, she orders spaghetti. Instead of rushing through her meal to hurry onto the next thing, she takes it in slowly, absorbs the tastes and smells, looks at her newspaper, practices Italian. Later, all the men in a barber shop she visits teach her how the language is spoken with one’s hands, with gestures, not just words, and she starts to understand how kinesthetic the culture is.

I think this is such a refreshing outlook on life. Taking each moment, in all its robust, rich, and spirited angles, and exploring it. Thinking on it. Questioning and discussing. Using your hands to make and fix things. Living in intense and earnest relationship with friends, family, and God. I love Psalm 24:1, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein…”

I consider it a great joy to dwell therein.

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