What is life?

I had 11 tubes going, what a fun time it was!

So 2014 came… and it started off with some jolly good times for me. On the 2nd day of this brand new, unblemished year, I was lucky enough to be admitted for a 5 day hospital stay in beautiful La Jolla, CA. 

Is it sounding like a vacation yet? Because it definitely was no where near a vacation. 

I learned that I must have the odds in my favor because I got a 1 in 100,000 person case of a nasty Staph infection that got into my blood stream and tried to take me out. Luckily by the sheer grace of God, the wisdom of my mother and the promptness of my best friend, I got the care I needed just in time before complications set in. Lets just say I am first, thankful to be alive, thankful to not have any complications or suffer any consequences and thankful for the friends and family who came and took care of me. Second, I am done getting sick for the rest of my life and I'm not going back to the hospital unless its time to have a baby. 

Scripps La Jolla Emergency Room… we are never ever ever getting back together. I hope you understand why. 

I am now back at home, resting, recovering and preparing for my final semester of college. Less than 4 months stand between me and my undergraduate diploma. As much as I am looking forward to finishing school and moving on to the next chapter of my life, there has been a question I know I am not the only one asking: "What is life?"

I know it sounds funny and everyone always asks with it with a laugh. But really, what is life? 

I have heard that "Life is what happens when you're busy planning other things" and that is a pretty fair thing to say. I'm not a "planner" but I do like to at least be able to gauge how things will go and when they will happen. If you asked me just a few weeks ago, I thought I kinda knew where life was headed. I had some plans and ideas set that I thought were pretty great. I thought things for a second made sense. The puzzle pieces of life were fitting together and I was seeing some kind of picture. Now looking back at those plans and thoughts, I can say that a lot of them didn't happen and a lot of those ideas… well I realized what I thought I needed and wanted was not at all what was best for me. 

Funny how life works out like that. Things can change in the matter of the day. I went to bed at 3:30 on New Years feeling totally fine and woke up just 2 hours later on the brink of hospitalization. And its not just sickness that throws a wrench in our plans. Its everything from crazy weather to popped tires to electrical malfunctions to dysfunctional people who can't get it together and mess up our lives in their inability to get theirs together. But if its anything I have learned in my almost 23 years of existence is that all these things will continue to happen. These unfortunate events aren't what is inhibiting "life," but rather they are life. 

Life is all those things that go on and happen to all of us. Nothing that happens is unique to just us. Bad things happen to everyone. Whatever it is that you are experiencing, someone else out there is experiencing the exact same thing. A broken heart. A lost job. A death. An accident. A financial crisis. An illness. Whatever it may be, there is absolutely nothing that is happening to you that has never happened to anyone else, because that my friends, is life. 

You can't plan and account for every possible thing that may go wrong, but what you can do is to be aware and conscientious of the way you respond to the things that happen to you. I am a firm believer in that life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% of how you respond to it.  

Sometimes we put so much faith and expectation into a person or a job or a future event/milestone, almost to where they/it are on a pedestal and we don't mind placing them/it there. This thing or event or person seem to be that which we have long desired for. But what happens when we lose the job or the person or the event/milestone falls through? Usually, we first grieve a little. We think about the what could have been and how it would have been and spend a little time wallowing in our sadness. But what is key is what happens after the sadness phase. You can continue to ravel in the sadness, in the what could have been and you can get stuck in that place for a long time. Some people just never let go and stay in the past their entire lives. 

Since life is going to continue happening to me and you, I'd like to take the New Year as a reminder that things after some kind of collapse can always start anew. Instead of dwelling on the past and the unfortunate circumstances we were put in, those very things can be looked at as the opportunities, lessons for the futures, and a better path diverging from the one you thought was best. Woody Allen famously said that if you want to make God laugh, tell him all about your plans. 

I am all too often reminded of my own limited view scope. I thought I knew what I wanted and I thought I knew what I needed. Silly me because the only who know that and has it planned out is God. But sometimes I think I can speed up the process and help the man upstairs out a little bit. I think its him opening doors but really its me using up all my energy, pushing the doors open when they were clearly meant to be closed. If only we all had more trust in the saying that when God opens a door, nobody can close it. 

With a new exciting year starting, I would like to first accept that fact that life, well, is everything. Its every little thing that happens and every thing that does not happen. Its not always exciting and fun. Sometimes it seems like its just crickets chirping and your own mind pounding the question "so what happens next?" over and over again. 
But those moments of quiet and thought are perhaps the most valuable of all. When you confront your own self and think about things for a minute or two. 

Second, all those things that will continue to happen to me (minus the hospital part ), I want to accept them with strength and courage. I want to accept them as learning lessons or moments of realizations and to hear God's voice among the midst of chaos. Third, I want to let go of my own personal plans and accept that I really don't actually know what is best. God has prepared the best for you and if we are too busy trying to find it on our own, we will miss out on the very best and that, well, that would the biggest misfortune of them all.