I sat in class yesterday and re-evaluated life. The professor carried on enthusiastically about health behavior models and social determinants of health, but my mind was light-years away trying to pin down what, really, do I care about. What is important?
Global health work, that's a given. Portions of my life will undoubtedly include travel, foreign languages, dirt, NGOs, grant-writing, boots and living out of a backpack. That said, I've realized there are a few beautifully important things I want to stabilize whatever life, careers, and relationships come my way. I sat in class and realized that it's important my future life allows me to:
Have an actual home
Raise chickens
Tend a vegetable garden
Bake bread. Regularly.
Have hardwood floors and big windows and antique maps on the walls
Meditate
Travel
Invest in people
Read with my kids. Voraciously
Put on pearls and go to the ballet
Live simply
Splurge on the important things: the arts, books, plane tickets, perfume, and his cologne
Family dinners
Love.
I want love to seep through the walls, through the conversations, through the joy and anger and laughter and challenges. I want love to engulf my future home and family. I want it to manifest itself in quiet deeds and kind words, back massages and sips of wine. I need love to be rejuvenating, therapeutic, raw and vulnerable. I want it to be honest, challenging, patient, real. I want it to pick me up off the floor when I'm overwhelmed with the pain of the world. I want it to be what pulls us closer when life is too much. I want it to be what keeps us going, keeps us laughing, keeps us humble, keeps us together.
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