Monday, November 10, 2014

Misplaced Happiness

I'm sure we have all been there: working so hard towards something, maybe even to a point where you're harming yourself and others because you want this one thing so badly. You can't sleep well until you know you're in a good place in relation to your goal. You can barely focus on anything else because 24/7 you are thinking of this goal; sometimes you even have dreams (or nightmares) about it.

If you've never been there, you, my friend, are lacking a passion.

Usually, two things happen: you achieve your goal or you don't. 99.9% of the time, if you don't achieve it, you're crushed and disheartened. Your heart feels as if you tossed it in a compactor that did all sorts of damage to it. Your soul hurts. This mental pain is so excruciating and full of anguish that you physically start to feel it: first it starts with a friendly headache, before it affects your joints, and then every part of your body. You're tired, you're lethargic, you're apathetic. Soon, you become sick because you spent so much time trying to reach your goal, you forgot to take care of yourself.

If you did achieve your goal, 99.9% of the time, you feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, comparable to drinking mulled wine or hot spiced cider. The feelings starts at the bottom of your stomach: you get so excited, you start getting agitated at first. You might or might not shake, but then you have the overwhelming urge to cry because you're so excited, there are no emotions that come even close to describing how you feel. You smile so hard, you're actually afraid you're going to develop premature fine lines around your face (or maybe this is exclusive solely to me.)

Now, if you noticed I used a percentage and you were wondering about that, here is my explanation for it: sometimes, the feelings and emotions get misplaced. You reach your goal, and you're extremely upset, or you don't reach it, and you're very happy.

Well, the latter happened to me. For 4 semesters, I was working towards one goal: Recruitment Chair (RC) of my sorority. That's the only way I wanted to be on the Executive Board. For some odd reason, I really wanted to be the RC. People thought I was crazy because that job is absolutely ghastly: you live, breath, sleep, eat recruitment. That turned me on. If I get to law school and realize being a lawyer isn't for me (which is possibly likely to happen,) I really want to go out and campaign for things and people I believe in (Dear Future Husband, I hope you'll be stable for the kid's sake if I decide to jump from campaign to campaign and advocacy groups and fundraisers.) It got to a point where everybody knew I wanted to be the RC, and I was okay with that because I really wanted to be it.

The road wasn't easy, mentally or physically. Faced some adversity, people tried discouraging me, but I still wanted to be RC. It got to a point where I remember hyperventilating because I was convinced the current RC hated me and wouldn't approve me as her successor because she didn't email me back. Silly, I know.

But then a couple of days ago, I got news that I wouldn't be able to be on exec because my GPA for the Executive Board was too low. I read the email and I cried... Tears of happiness. How bizarre is that?

But, truly, it wasn't that bizarre.

"Be the change you want to see in the world."

My views are a bit different than my sorority's views. That's fine. But then I realized, I wouldn't be able to change myself to be what my sorority would need. My ideas for my sorority are great, but some people probably wouldn't like them and maybe not even approve of how I got there. A lot of the girls joined this certain sorority because they felt comfortable with all of the ideals; I joined because I wanted to shake things up a bit. I know I wouldn't be able to give a little bit of myself to make myself more personable to be the RC. I'd literally go crazy. The other day while flyering, a guy looked at me and my letters and completely disregarded the great cause we supported. Want to know what I did? Passed out a flier to his friend and made a VERY passive-aggressive comment about his attitude. Oops. Want to know what I would do if I was RC? Just imagine it. I believe in tough love for most things, so I literally would not care about 95% of the concerns you would come to me with. We have to wear something for one of our rounds that I would never be caught in unless I was dying and/or paid $1,000,000, but I sucked it up and I bought it, and I'm probably going to torch the shit out of it unless I decide to bedazzle it.

So, when I was told I was ineligible, I was ecstatic. There is something very comforting in knowing that you will not be the most hated person in your sorority. Plus, that is one more thing I would not have to deal with. Honestly, I would not be able to give 100%, which isn't fair. I'm taking LSAT prep all throughout January, I'm taking the test in February, I'm meeting with advisors to start creating my personal statements in April, I'm starting my applications when they come out, and I will have them all sent out by the middle of September. And then throughout this timeframe, I want to work with a political consulting firm or advocacy groups that help people get elected positions before eventually maybe even helping out on the presidential campaign at the close of my senior year.

I would call this a blessing in disguise.

I'm sad that I couldn't be the RC, especially considering all the time I spent in trying to become one, but I would have been more sorry as an RC.

And I had to think about this, like really think about it, because at first I was just afraid that I was creating an excuse for myself, a story to make myself feel better, but I am positive that it wasn't that.

:-)

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