Space Between

I was eight when my Dad first taught me his famous airplane counter game. It wasn’t a game so much as something to keep a paranoid girl occupied during the most frightening stretches of long flights: take off and landing. He would dare me to begin counting when the plane engaged its engine, preparing to fly, and then stop when we got off the ground. “The bigger planes take forty-seven seconds,” I remember him explaining, clear and strong. His voice was the only one that mattered to me, amidst the fluffy cumulous and the flight attendant’s crackling, overhead announcements. Sometimes, eager to beat him at his own game, I’d count fast, or I’d hold my little breaths between “seconds” to make them longer, adding in extra time where there shouldn’t have been any. Dad saw right through me, though, as in most things, and he murmured, “I bet you I’ll get the number right every time we fly together.” He’s been right for fifteen years and counting.

I bring up this little anecdote not because it’s just after Father's Day weekend, or because the image of my burly father with a skinny, fearful little girl is cute (though both are in fact true). Every time I’m on a plane, I count. And so I am constantly aware of how time feels as it passes us by. Travel makes one infinitely nostalgic, since we are usually exploring our futures and pasts at the other end of the runway. For once, I’ll spare you my usual melodrama. Where I would normally say that last weekend, the one I spent at Lawrence University, was infinitely nostalgic and sad, there is absence. My experience was not tainted by that familiar, weighted reminiscence. Instead I was filled with elation.

Nearly a year ago, I gave Lawrence a long, drawn out farewell. I thought I knew where I was headed. Like any college graduate, I was filled with empty cockiness. Yes, I know me! Yes, I’ve made this decision! Yes, it’s going to work out! I packed up my things and all my love and gave them to the world with fearless risk. Too far, too soon, too much to lose. I misplaced the central parts of Katie and forgot the way home. I returned, recouped, and renewed. And here I sit, a woman whose personality has undergone so many changes in the past year she is all but unrecognizable to those who know her best. In my new life, I’m smiley Katie. Energetic, enthusiastic, endearing – the girl who takes chances and reads short stories and falls hopelessly in love with her godmother’s beautiful children between sunsets and renditions of Let it Go. I’m exhausted. I’m broke. I’m fit to be tied. I rarely have a moment to catch my breath. Lawrence never knew this version of me, but it was a place that more than shaped her. My darling, dear friend Lawrence, where I learned how much I could handle at one time, what I was capable and incapable of doing, which kinds of people I needed in my life, the passions I hold most dear, and those things that are disposable, too. 

I love Lawrence. I think I always will. But my experience there pervaded knowledge, dissertations, and voice recitals. In three, ten week segments per year, I put my heart and my brain on the line to be tested, just like every other Lawrentian in attendance. There's this saying we have on campus that everyone knows but never really defines: The Lawrence Difference. Capital letters, shock and awe. Those who have never walked the halls and grounds as Lawrentians have do not know what it means. When I tell people in DC I've gone to Lawrence, they think it's a school I've made up in my head. "St. Lawrence? Sarah Lawrence? Wait, it's a conservatory? Do you mean you went to Oberlin or Northwestern?" Sigh. No, no, no, and no. Not only have a gone to a school in a place nobody has heard of, but I then insist that the experiences we have as Lawrentians are unique from other liberal arts colleges and top-notch conservatories, which alienates whoever it is I'm speaking to. "Everyone's time in college is unique! They're all the same that way." No, indeed. There's just something about Lawrence.

The speeches at graduation this year were wise and prophetic. The student who spoke delivered a one liner that I think will forever stick with me and the graduates of 2014: "Do not pursue a career. Pursue a life instead." When I heard her speak these terse phrases, a sharp intake of breath seized in my lungs. I felt as though she'd read my mind. While other professors and deans and counselors and networking contacts have insisted the contrary, here, on this chilly Sunday morning on the campus green, a bright-eyed slip of a girl gave everyone all the advice I've been dying to dole out. In that moment, it was perfection. Seek a place, seek a life, seek love. Above all, never ever deny yourself happiness because of a job.

For all the graduates I saw that day, I repeated this well-kept secret. Less than two months after making that decision myself, I've never been happier. I want them to put all their dreams in a bucket, pack it into their suitcases and fly through the universe, knowing that pursuit of a career comes second in this crazy adventure that is life. For how can we know what we love if we aren't first happy to experience the small things? I don't have much, but I have friends, family, and a future in this place I have chosen. It is terrifying and depth-defying but necessary. Get messy, class of 2014. Do something crazy and throw caution to the wind. Life is nothing without a good adventure.

When the other speaker took the podium, his discourse was dark. The universe we inhabit has become a fearsome place, and most of it is cause by our race and our race alone. Poverty, ineffectual democracy, an earth that will not sustain us for another thousand years, and injustice between peoples run rampant. While his list was exhaustive, he did offer a simple solution: take all you have learned at Lawrence with you and use it every day of your life. Engage change, invent innovation, take the bull by the horns and decrease the quantity of all those things which make our world horrific. But for heaven's sake, waste not your talents in pursuit of money. Such things are foolish when you education means so much more and allows you better choices. Among the worst things to do is to go out in the world and cause more hell where you could have made something better with a bit more thought and care. The generations before you have served selfishly. Refuse to follow their path.

What I think he didn't realize, however, is that Lawrentians already know this. Highly altruistic, we like the idea of serving the greater good. The Lawrence Difference.

I loved seeing those people I hold most dear, but the whole time I felt like I was experiencing an acute combination of déjà vu and vertigo. My memories of the place, both vivid and lengthy, are no longer living. While the place is always sacred, what prevails are the people I love. That is the universal experience of college. At some point, we all realize that experiences, knowledge, and dreams are passing fancies, but that the people with whom we shared them are the greatest things we have in life.

So yes, let's stretch out the seconds! Let's simultaneously hope the plane will take off safely and get stuck on the ground. Let's listen to Dad. (Or not listen to Dad.) Let's redefine what matters in the world and how to really get ahead. But above all things, let's not discount the space between, for it is in those silent moments where we all grow up. 

From Limits on Thoughts and Behavior

At the intersection of Florida, Massachusetts, and Q street northwest, it seems every building I pass is a testament to all things precious and lovely. I cross this grand avenue in acceptance of my disorientation. Yes, I am lost on this clear, luminous summer morning, as I wander the boulevards in solitude. I search, in all practicality, for my volunteer post, an old, historical mansion at the crossroads of Dupont and Georgetown, but given my systemic punctuality, have over thirty minutes before reporting. I am leisurous, undefined, perhaps a bit thoughtless. The point in fact, is that I hardly care.

My life, if measured in unextraordinary happenings and experiences, hardly amounts to much on paper. I participate in those normal things that people of my age enjoy: drinks on the town, concerts, language classes, yoga, 9-5 jobs, shopping, and galas. But because I have been denied these and other happinesses for so long, the depth of my contentment is utterly boundless. I am slowly but surely making my mark here. Most mornings, my first thought upon waking is, "I am among the happiest people alive." I say this with the most sincerity I can. I've never felt so at peace.

Again, I'm sure it sounds ridiculous to many, as I have no career prospects, no furniture, little food, and an unfortunate amount of student loan debt. But I am surrounded by amazing friends and family and my life is full of adventure and opportunity. In this moment I am nothing but bliss. I have made my social and professional faux pas, like flirting when I shouldn't, destroying my favorite dress from coffee at the office as the CEO walks by, trusting people who don't deserve it, and generally being a fool. On days when I'm embarrassed by these and other mistakes, I'm now confident enough in myself to laugh. I don't think I've ever had more courage than in the past month, and I was already known for my boldness. Liberation is far too weak a word to describe the way I feel. I am unafraid to be who I am, for the first time in three long years. Perhaps it is the first time at all.

I confess I do not have much free time, so these quiet mornings with coffee in hand, wandering about aimlessly, are all I have. I attempt to soak all of it in with attention. I love mornings. They are naught but tranquil moments between myself and the breeze. Specific seconds where nothing matters but the sound of my breath.

I think it would be more than safe to admit that I've learned more about being alive in the past month than I have in the twenty-two years of months that preceded this one. Or perhaps I understand more about myself. I am passionate, dramatic, intelligent, kind. I am the one who defines my worth. No person or group of people decide my identity. Rather, those here who I name my greatest friends accept, without question, support, without judgement, and bring out those qualities that are the best. It is a rare gift to be surrounded by such wonderful human beings.

Passionate people are limited in a way, for we have so many interests and opportunities that we are forced to choose one at the expense of the other. The extraordinary thing about this town is that the majority of its citizens describe themselves as passionate, so finding something you love to do is easy and it leads you to connect with similarly passionate people. We all want to change the world somehow. We just have no idea how to go about it. And while this city lives and breathes by the practice of networking the magnificent part of it is that everyone is willing to help. We Melchior girls are a little notorious for being damsels in distress at the worst possible time. Yet not once have I felt alone, unloved, or without prospect. The magic of this place lies somewhere between its historical mortar and warm residents. Unexpected and special, it all runs like a well-oiled machine.

I would wager to say I am lucky, but I know this is not at all true. I have never been one of those individuals with exceptional timing. No indeed, this happiness has been earned from years of struggle. And so, as I meander through these brick boulevards in moments soft and crisp, I reflect on all that has happened to have brought me here. I can hardly remember the suffering, but I know it was long. I was unhappy for a very extensive period of time. Regardless, the desert has given way to a little paradise. My glowing mantra is that of unending gratefulness.

I've no idea, of course, where the next year of my life will go. But my intuition tells me I am at the right place at the right time. This knowledge is half the battle. With this in mind, I feel delivered, empowered. I discuss the philosophy of education with some of the smartest people I know on summer nights warm and silvery. I explore dark paths under stars with gentlemen and soldiers. I forge ahead, fearless as I look to the future, in tango orange gowns on military bases. This is the purest form of Katie there is: enthusiastic, fearless, thoughtful. Every moment, planned or unplanned, is cherished.

The point of all this rambling is to say that I not only see myself in this way, but that I feel I am listening to other people for the first time, too. I invent their stories and listen to their conversations, and by their interactions alone I am able to improve and learn. This sort of understanding cannot exist on a college campus, where practical knowledge is often deemed subversive. So this year away from higher education has taught me more than I expected and through it all, I have nothing but gratefulness.

Next weekend, I will return to Appleton, Wisconsin with a kind of bittersweet reminiscence. As I stated nearly a year ago, that place, while dear to my most contrite heart, no longer belongs to me. I wonder if my mind will race as it once did in desperation for acceptance. Now it has no reason to do so. I have now found more fulfillment than I ever thought I would here, on a tiny spot of earth neither state nor city. The district. With all its faults and criticisms, it is home.

A fellow Lawrence alum shocked me one evening when he said he was overwhelmed by my sense of intuition. "Most 22-year-olds believe intuition to be something of myth. They don't have it. So they wander in life without goals or plans. And then there is you."

Until this move, I always had a plan. Taught well by my paramilitary upbringing, I am good with minutia and details. It made me an excellent worker but a poor human being. I had to learn how to trust things that are beyond my control. A hard lesson.

They say no one likes change. Yet here I am, reveling in the knowledge that the greatest changes are yet to come. To the universe that arranges them, I say this and this alone: bring it on. I am who I am, diligent and excited to face that which comes.

And that, dear readers, is the truest definition of the word "liberation".