To be loved widely, to be loved deeply

"I love you. When you die, I'll remember you." -- Hazel

I was talking to Melody a a month or two ago, trying to win an argument about who knew the other more. We covered middle names, embarrassing stories from the past, future goals, the works. Then we came to another big question: what do you think is my greatest fear?

Mel asked me first and thought I'ld respond with something physical. Heights. Spiders. Deep Water. But instead, I paused thought about what we've worked through in the past, and built a response

"Dying alone."
Mel paused mid- 'I told you so'. "Uh.. yeah. Wow. Yeah actually that is it."
As in any great friendship, we discuss everything. One of the main topics hat tends to come up is our current romantic interests. Yes, we both see our failing situations with humor and talk about it thusly, but, with Mel, it comes up enough that I knew it was something on her mind. There were often off-handed remarks that she would say under her breath like "If I don't meet someone here, I don't know what I'm going to do." Even coupled with laughter, there is truth in things like that.

"Yeah. What's yours?"

I thought about everything in life that should scare me. Death. Drowning. Losing someone close to me. Though these ideas are definitely not the happiest in the world, I knew that I could move beyond them. And when you can move forward, whatever you were able to pass ceases to be your greatest fear. After eliminating, only the truth remained.

"I fear looking back at my life, 40 years from now, and realizing I never lived."

Only after saying those words did I realize how true they were. I fear making choices not because I want to but because I was expected to. I fear following a path following the next most logical step rather than following the side roads that interest me. I fear that I will live an average life. I fear that i will not marry the great love of my life but rather someone who's timing was perfectly coincided with my inevitable biological-clock meltdown in my early thirties.


I just got back from watching the Fault in Our Stars. For some reason, this conversation came back to me as I walked out of the theater. Something about loss, something about happiness in the middle of tragedy, made me realize that Mel and my greatest fears may be closer than we thought. We want to be remembered. We want to have an impact on someone more than just a loosely tied friendship. We want to love and be loved deeply and, in the process, live.

Augustus Waters feared oblivion. He, too, wanted to be special and have an impact on the world before his time was up. Hazel taught him that, you don't have to be loved widely to be remembered. You have to let yourself be loved deeply. You have to look at the world, in all of its darkness, its pain, and its weaknesses, and find it somewhere inside of yourself to be happy.


I promise you I'm not trying to be preachy. For any readers out there, I know a lot of these posts seem to have some sort of overarching theme/challenge to go "live life and change the world". I want to emphasize that I write for myself. I write to understand myself better and figure out things. These challenges are not meant to make this blog pretentious or preachy but rather to remind myself of who I'm trying to be. Who I intend to be.Once upon a time, I, too, feared oblivion. Maybe I still do. but now I'm actively trying to conquer that fear. The truth of the matter is: we are all going to die. There was a time before humans, and there will be a time after. Eventually, there will be no one to remember me, my friends, my family, even the Greats of history. And as terrifying as that is, it's not as sad as I once believed. The reason? We still have today. We still have our little lives within our little infinities. We have our love of one another and our numbered days to make sure that love shows. Even if we won't be remembered all those years from now, today, we are in the hearts of those nearest to us.

To me, being alive in the hearts and minds of my friends and family and having an impact on those who I can while I'm alive means endlessly more than being another line in a history textbook. Love keeps us alive when it needs to. And when it's  time for us to go it blows a soft kiss and lets us fade peacefully. Love does not mean living forever. Love means taking forever and letting it live within us.

I don't know if that makes sense to any of you readers out there, but I hope it resounds with someone. 

My friend, Grace, who is spending her summer in Jodhpur, India, posted this quote today. Physically leaving, even just mentally going on these journeys of reflection, can add so much to the way you see the world. I'm going to meditate on it for awhile and I hope you find it in yourself to do so as well:

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

Some Career/ Future Reflection

If I know one thing for certain, it is that I do not measure success by monetary means. After graduation, I know that I want to find a career path that will allow me to live comfortably but the money is not what will get me up each day excited to go to work. Rather, I want to be a part of something greater. I want to know that the work I do each day is somehow impacting the world around me in some greater, and lasting way. In doing so, I will also have an effect on myself and be able to see my passions grow.

Originally, I thought the answer to this was to go into non-profit work. It makes sense, right? Be a part of an organization who’s number one goal, above making money, is altruism. But the more I thought about it, and broke down the concept, the more questions i had. Though non-profit work is definitely a noble pursuit, would it really provide me with the sort of life I want to live? Will it create lasting change rather than simply put a band-aid over the greater problem? Will I have the flexibility to create change on a global scale? Will the day-to-day work be closer to volunteer work or will I be able to see my efforts make people’s lives increasingly easier in the long run?

When I realized that non-profit work wasn’t quite right for me, I changed to the mindset that I want to go into technology. Which also seemed to make sense. In this day and age, technology is propelling us into our communal future and moving faster each day. If I want to be a part of something greater, something lasting, I should learn some programming, and make a life-changing app, right? If that doesn’t work, I should be on the business side of things and develop a business with a great idea so that it reaches as big of an audience as possible. But once again, something didn’t feel quite right. Honestly, I have had no interest in technology in my life up to date rather than acknowledge that something is cool or progressive when it is. I am not one to actively go out and look through technology web pages trying to stay on top of the latest and greatest. I use technology in my own life but only to do something with it-- not as the final product.

So if non-profit work and the technology sector are not the right fit for me, what is?

I was recently accepted to join an organization called Management Leadership for Tomorrow or MLT. The organization’s goal is to raise the next generation of business leaders and give them the network and foundation to succeed. For the first month’s assignment, the goal was to give students more insight into what exactly they want to go into after graduation. We completed an activity in which we had to look through 100 jobs in all sorts of areas and right down, without thinking too hard, which ones sounded the most appealing to us. Money was not an issue. Education level was not an issue. Just purely based on the title of the job, what did I want to do? We were then asked to not look deeper into the specific jobs  but rather their overlapping themes. My choices seemed to highlight the following: People, change, writing, free-thinking, development. The more I considered it, the more I fell in love with these concepts. My courses of study, a double major in Psychology and Economics with a minor in Creative Fiction Writing, focus on these ideas as well. I never really saw the intersection until this activity. I have always thrived off of my interactions with others and the stories I could learn about and, following, write about based on these interactions. However, the issue was that I wanted to do more. As enthralling as some stories were, I’ve always felt the need to do something about the injustices that I hear about. Perhaps that is where the original ideas for non-profit work and technology came from. Perhaps that is why i’ve always felt inclined to participate in the international spring break service trips that build houses in Peru or water filtration systems in Tanzania. My key point? i want to make others’ lives easier.

One of my best friends, Sanchita, is a part of an organization on campus called Global Engagement Summit. Since she first joined, she told me that I would love it. We both used to be a part of an organization called AIESEC that focused on students creating international opportunities for other students in order to better the global community. Though the concept was interesting, day-to-day, the “change” we were making was almost invisible. GES, on the other hand, focuses on a concept called social entrepreneurship. Today was my first day really looking into it.

This is a quote directly from Wikipedia’s social entrepreneurship page:

“Social entrepreneurship is the process of pursuing innovative solutions to social problems. More specifically, social entrepreneurs adopt a mission to create and sustain social value. They draw upon appropriate thinking in both the business and nonprofit worlds and operate in a variety of organizations: large and small; new and old; religious and secular; nonprofit, for-profit, and hybrid.
Business entrepreneurs typically measure performance in profit and return, but social entrepreneurs also take into account a positive return to society. Social entrepreneurship typically furthers broad social, cultural, and environmental goals and is commonly associated with the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors.[2] Profit can at times also be a consideration for certain companies or other social enterprises.

Social entrepreneurship practiced in a world or international context is called international social entrepreneurship.”

I mean, RIGHT?

This area has everything I’ve been looking for: change beyond the present, a solution, a blend of business and nonprofit worlds, success measured by more than just the number of dollars you put away at the end of the year, an international component, the ability to think freely and create change on a project-based plan, the works.

It even has a role of technology. Programs and technology allow these social enterprise ideas to be heard by a larger audience and affect a greater number of people. Social entrepreneurs are working to make their ideas more sustainable and eventually complete the change-focused projects which they begin.

Forbes published an article on the 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs for 2013: http://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2012/12/17/30-under-30-social-entrepreneurs/
Just look at some of the stories and you’ll know what I mean.

Depending on that feels right, my project can range from a global, 3rd world affair to a situation in which I am simply taking part in making people better versions of themselves. Here at HBP, my department does these leadership training simulations in which we help develop employees to have better professional skills that they can then use to better lead their respective companies. At my other internship possibility this summer, Udemy, I would have been working on creating connections between teachers who want to teach and students who want to learn. Even in these situations, I would be making a positive impact on the world.

My friend/ future roommate Michelle and I have been talking about beginning an underground organization next year called the One Day Project. Basically the concept is that we would create a community of students who embody the mindset that “one day” should start today. Too many times, students find themselves waiting. Waiting till after they graduate to pursue their dreams. repeatedly telling themselves that “one day”, they will finally be able to do what they really want to do. They just need to find a job to pay off the bills for now. This, I’ve learned is how people get stuck in traps. People pursue certain career path because it makes sense and it seems like the most logical next step to take. When I graduate, I want to know that I’ve left behind a university where people realize change starts today.

There’s an old proverb that says something like, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now.

So here’s my plan right now:
→ finish my degree with my current majors/ minor

→ take a year off traveling, and becoming immersed in cultures so different from mine; learn more tangibly what work needs to be done

→ spend 2 years in management consulting, working with for-profits, non-profits, technology companies, etc., and learn how to solve problems/ best practices for how to create a successful organization for change; use my skills learned from Students Consulting for Non-Profit Organizations

(→ alternative: spend two years doing Teach for America, and learn how to lead through teaching)
→ draft social entrepreneurship ventures while working

→ get started and create my own change! join a pre-existing social entrepreneurship organization, start my own, and see where it goes from there

(→ all the while, using my experiences and changing perceptions of the world to continue to write fiction for change and spread ideas about growth and fighting for what’s right)

That’s just where I am right now. It seems to make sense to me but I’m really excited to see how these perceptions grow and change in the years to come.  What do you think?

Here it goes! Cheers.

Profoundly Peaceful

I've been doing a lot of walking recently.

Just walking. Long, aimless, non-timed, unhurried, strolling. Sometimes I play my iPod and sometimes I just go, listening to nothing but the highs and lows of strangers' conversation and the rush of car tires accelerating against the road.

I've mastered the art of nothing. I can keep my mind blank, thinking of nothing but the warmth of the sun on an endlessly sunny afternoon. My mind is rested and my heart is light.

This weekend was the epitome of my newfound love. On Saturday, I took the train downtown to the Pride Parade to support a friend at work and ended up making my way to this beautiful garden oasis in the middle of the city. For hours I just walked, beaming to myself, and listened to the children laugh and the musicians play. Did I mention how gorgeous Boston is in the summertime? Usually, I'm not one to take pictures but there have been so many sights where I had to stop and ask myself, "Really? Am I really seeing this?" and snap a shot just to be sure.
Sunday I continued on my journey, first going to the dragon boat festival on the Charles River then meeting up with Mabo to walk over to Kendall Square from Harvard Square. From there, I lost myself in the sites on MIT's campus and the bridge connecting the two sides of the river. Absolutely breathtaking.
At work this morning, I got off a few stops early since I had taken the earlier bus and spent a few minutes swinging on the playground nearby.

There's just... peace in my heart. Totally and completely. Sometimes I think there's a certain melancholy twinge to it because with silence comes a certain loneliness. but each time that thought crosses my mind, I meet someone new. Someone even more amazing.

Life is good. It is so, so sweet. And I just wanted to take a minute to commend that.