AMY LARSON
Staff Writer
I was walking recently and ran into a friend of mine. She began to tell me about a meeting she’d been in that morning, where the topic of discussion was, “What makes you feel alive?”
I thought that was an interesting topic but then switched the subject to what I would do that weekend, or something else less important. My friend interrupted me, though, and brought us back on track: “Amy, what makes you feel alive?” I just stood there. Finally, she said, “Well, you don’t have to tell me now. Think about it.”
Perhaps she just got tired of waiting, or she realized an answer wasn’t coming soon. Either way, that question made me think. A lot. I considered many things I had done throughout my life, and how they impacted, changed or taught me. It was a pretty loaded question. As I went through the next couple days, her question was all I could think about. It crossed my mind all the time.
It’s a big question, but I am not certain I recognized how much it would change my life when I heard it. I wanted to ask people around me constantly and hear their perspectives. I wanted to look up different kinds of jobs, different kinds of classes and different places to volunteer.
I stopped thinking about what was expected of me as a career, as a Pepperdine graduate or as a certain type of person, and started thinking about what I was passionate about, what meant the most to me, and what I wanted to see when, someday, I looked back at my life as a whole.
I thought of her question when I went on Project Serve and helped in a women’s shelter, and how just connecting with people made me feel more alive than almost anything else. For me, it wasn’t necessarily the big things, like giving out food or necessities enjoyed most. It was the times when it was just being with the women from the shelter and doing laundry or cooking supper. I loved hearing their stories and learning from what they shared.
I think that sometimes we search so hard for what we should do with our lives but fail to recognize that we should just be doing what makes us actually feel like we are living. We pray and pray and wait and wait, hoping God will drop a note from the sky with some kind of clue to a map which will spell out our future. Perhaps, though, it is simpler than that.
Perhaps the things we inherently love are our indicators and our talents are our map. That amazing feeling of being alive isn’t necessarily just something that arbitrarily comes to us every now and again; rather, that feeling is intentional, and it comes for a reason. Feeling alive is actually how it feels to be doing what God wants us to do.
So I leave you with a challenge of sorts. Lay aside your major, your years of work experience or your stellar internship for just a moment, and think about what you are doing when you’re at your best; what is in front of you when you feel the most fulfilled, the most joyful, and the most true to who you really are. Got it. Now chase it as fast as you can.
03-29-2007