@Reyna: I'm trying to make this post elegant, just for you.
With graduation starting to loom up on me-- a mere six months away-- this is a question that has been weighing on my mind more often than usual:
What do you want to do with your life?
I've had many vague notions of an answer over the years. It started with a country singer, back when I was a child, moved to a paleontologist, a forensic scientist, a graphic designer, something to do with Japan, to something to do with Japan and teaching.
Coming to Japan has only solidified the latter two desires.
But I realized today what my core desire from life is: I want to help others achieve their dreams.
In a small way, that's what I'm doing now. Some of our students want to go to BYU Hawaii and study. That's a dream. And by teaching them English, I'm helping them achieve that dream.
It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of responsibility. It's also the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. And so my dream is to help others reach theirs.
As a wife (maybe, eventually, someday :p) I want to be a support to husband, to help him reach his goals and dreams.
As a mother, I want to raise and nurture, love and teach, and give my children as much help as I can to help them find their own paths, their own dreams, and then send them flying on their own wings.
And, especially if those first two don't happen, or don't happen for a while, as a teacher, helping students decide their path and giving them the knowledge they need to travel it.
In essence, my dream is to help others with theirs. Is that odd? Is that a cop-out? In some ways I feel like, Hey, Jessica, can't you come up with your own dreams? But the more I think about it, sure, it'd be fun to be an actress in Japan, or it would be rewarding to discover the cure to a disease. But I'm not that dedicated to those sorts of things. I'm not the person who will go down in history for doing great things.
And I'm perfectly happy for it to be that way.
My dream is to have people to devote my life to. People to love, people to serve.
So I ask you, what do you want to do with your life?
Bah. Why are you so cool? Now I have to copy you.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a wonderful dream, that's not a cop-out. If you like helping other people, then do it. :) Nothing wrong with it at all.
ReplyDeleteA big part of why I want to be a chemistry teacher is because it is so rewarding helping other people reach their dreams. I tutored a girl this last fall who was in community college taking the pre-reqs to get into a midwifery program. Before I started tutoring her, she was feeling so lost in her chemistry class that she was about to give up on her dream. But I was lucky enough to be in the right place for her and I was able to give her just enough help that she was able to find the success she needed to keep going. She is now enrolled in the program she wanted. It was so awesome!
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