Now that I am home, sitting in my room looking around at the piles of stuff falling out of my suitcase I cannot help but reflect in my time in New Zealand. I know this is a school blog, but I feel it's the best opportunity to be raw and honest about my journey in paradise and the realizations I came to while I was living on the island. Since college is more than just learning inside the classroom for a degree to prepare you for the future, I am a firm believer that there is more learning about life and who you are outside the classroom, which includes experiences such as this one, teaching and living in a foreign country.
Happiness has always been something that has been hard for me to swallow. Happiness is very temporal and fluctuating emotion that also seems to be the big rave these days, but it is something I have stayed up countless nights pondering. What is the difference between being joyful and happy? Joyful being a constant attribute about oneself, but not necessarily meaning that you are happy 24/7. Where as happiness can be a brief moment in time, fading just like time. My struggle with mental health has been something that I have buried deep inside of me for years and often put on a front, not wanting to let people down if spoken about. It has been something that has kept me up more nights than I wish to admit and made me question life in it of itself. I have tried to find things or situations that help me walk away from the darkness that overcomes my emotions and learning to walk away from self pity, knowing that it is an element of dissatisfaction.
Almost every summer while in college I have walked away ready to go into a new year ready to conquer the challenges that I know I will walk through during the upcoming school year, just as every stage of life brings. Somewhere along the way, I seem to lose myself, or the vision I set for myself that I had during the summer. I've come to the realization that some of it does have to do with weather. I feel more satisfied about life when the sun is shining and heat is radiating in my bones; but as with anything, there is much more to it than sunshine.
When I lived and worked in yellowstone two summers ago, I truly think it was the happiest I have been in my short years of living. It was there that I made the decision to take the jump and come to New Zealand and take the risk to student teach abroad. This had me thinking, as I sit here, now reflecting on the decision I made years before, that it's all about passion. This has been something I have attempted to grasp while I have been in college, the simplicity and complexity of passion.
While in New Zealand it finally hit me that I had no idea what life was to bring post graduation. It was something that I have put off since the day I decided to become an education major. What do I want do? What does life look like? What will bring me happiness? All of this has been constantly running through my head for the past four and a half years. Is this truly something that will bring me happiness in life? That's the problem, the word happiness floating around as if that's what I wanted to achieve. Happiness is ever changing, to answer the question if teaching will bring me happiness the answer is no teaching will not bring me happiness. One day it can bring me immense amounts of happiness when a student you have been struggling with finally comprehends a point you have been hounding to them, but the next day, all hell may break loose in the classroom and I could be immeasurably unhappy about everything and anything in the career that I chose. So why would I choose to stick with teaching then?
Yellowstone, that summer was monumental for me in more ways I could describe starting looping back to the single word, passion. Going into that summer I was slowly being released from a toxicity that still to this day is hard for me to swallow. Let alone speak to anyone about, especially people that have loved me before my memories allow me to date back to and people that walked beside me without even knowing they were. That summer I worked with a ministry group and we were probably the most dysfunctional group I could imagine, but we all came with our uniqueness and baggage. That summer presented its own challenges, but there was one night that everything seemed to break for me personally and I was told to walk away. Walk away from the life I needed to shed myself from and I did just that, I walked away. It seems cliche and seems like a movie reel, but I truly did just that, walk away. With that though, as with anything, came the anxiety of the unknown of various areas of my life including my future. I no longer wanted anyone or anything to dictate anything in my life, I wanted to make decisions on my own and for my own future. Since that night, I feel like I have stayed true to my redemption, but also strayed from it in other areas. That summer I feel was the greatest three months of life because I was doing something I was passionate about, I felt alive, fully present in the pain and in the joy that was surrounding me. I want to be outside, I want to feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, I want to feel raindrops when I am hiking, I want to pursue the Lord in the way he lays on my heart, including things that are not on the beaten path. Any hiker knows to stay on the marked path because you never know what wildlife you will lay eyes on, but any adventurer knows that someone once had to step off the path to create the path that they are trekking on in the first place.
This brings me back to New Zealand. As my days in New Zealand started to come closer to the end, my anxiety started to raise as I recognized that I needed to take this first step out in the world that my parents have raised me to be a part of. As I laid on the beach one afternoon I realized, I have not been this happy since I left Yellowstone. I loved where I was living, I loved what I was doing, the people surrounding me were supportive and uplifting, this is exactly what my life can look like if I follow in passion what I desire for myself by my choices and not by anyone else's standards or direction of life. It had to do with my surroundings, but it also started with waking up everyday telling myself that I was happy, that I loved what I was doing, that I find joy in what I put forth to the world.
Every person struggles in life, a lot of people struggle with finding happiness, and a lot of people study abroad. There are a lot of people in this world, but there is only one you. I think there are so many quotes, lyrics, inspirational messages out in the world because humans do have great things to say and ways to live life, but it's what you as an individual choose to live by. A lot of humans may have already come to this realization about life, but I am coming to terms with this now, that's what has made living and traveling abroad and even traveling within my own homeland an anomaly, interesting, and difficult for myself.
Thank you New Zealand for my overseas experience, thank you for helping me find my voice. Thank you for helping me realize it's passion that I am pursuing and not happiness. Thank you for allowing me to teach 30 hormonal preteen kids. Thank you for the constant rain on my skin. Thank you for the sunburns and hole in the atmosphere. Thank you for letting me test my education, but most of all thank you for letting me come to terms with my education and choices in life. Thank you for allowing me to sleep with cockroaches at night. Thank you for the beetroot burgers and dirt McDonalds ice cream. Thank you for helping me become a professional at public transportation. Thank you mom and dad for your financial and loving support through my decisions in life. Thank you New Zealand for being a hidden gem of paradise, this truly has been a life changing experience and I can say with certainty in my heart that I will never be the same after these 11 weeks in Aotearoa.
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