Sometimes beauty sprawls out in front, a majestic waterfall,
or a snow capped peak, impossible to pass by and not notice. Other times it is
hidden, a simple bloom among thorns, perhaps painful to reach and easy to miss.
I think my experience living in a foreign land has been much more
representative of the latter. The beauty is deep, and there are hints of what
is lovely, but sometimes it is hidden and the journey is painful.
I have been struggling lately with my inabilities to achieve
in a place so foreign. Perhaps such a struggle showcases the very fickleness of
my human nature, but I came from a place where I knew what it meant to be a
high achiever. I was used to being good at things. I was used to working hard
and doing well, to being at the top of the class, the investing deeply in
things that mattered to me and having those things somehow work out. I have
found that when I moved to a place where I don’t understand the customs, where
I often misunderstand and am misunderstood, where doing simple tasks become
increasingly difficult, I just feel somehow so unqualified. Yes it is true,
that in the past year and a half I have learned to adapt, and my husband has
been a wonderful buffer to all this chaos. I have learned to drive in chaotic
traffic, to negotiate a price, and to buy from the market, sometimes even in the local language. And yet, I still
feel somehow maimed because I cannot operate at the same capacity that I once
did. It has been humbling and forever changing, and probably even good for me
as hard as it has been. It has been a journey of putting to death who I once
was and seeking to find beauty in dry and cracked places. This loss of myself
has been hard to reconcile, and I often grieve who I used to be, but I am
increasingly finding beauty in the place that I am.
And yesterday, I sat in a room of students, at the front
among other volunteer instructors as the students had time to ask us any
question they wanted. One student directed a question at me “How can I feel like I am
good at something when there is so much I don’t know and I keep making mistakes,
when I feel like I don’t know anything?”
Amen brother, somehow our souls feel this same kind of pain. I told him
that there are so many days when I feel like I don’t know anything, but we must
push on. We must find others who have stood before us to teach us, to encourage
us and to show us the way. We must not get discouraged and want to quit when
things get hard, because even if you work the same job for 50 years, although a
level of comfort comes with gained experience, there are still days when you
feel like you have no idea what you are doing. This is why we are engineers,
because these road blocks give us opportunities not to give up, but to find a
way around. Perhaps that student asked that question because I needed to hear
my own answer even more than he did. Perhaps as the sun rises and the sun sets,
I need to remind myself of that every single day. Perhaps I can tell these
students that even as they struggle to find their way, so too do I, and that is
ok. As I walk back to my room, I see it so clearly. A brilliant flash of purple
hidden among the foliage. It is here among us, this hidden beauty. It is there
displaying its brilliance, overcoming what tries to extinguish it.