This post is not exactly about Haiti (but it sort of is in a way) – my daughter Bethany wrote this 10 years ago when she was just 15 years old – still incredibly profound, maybe even more so today:
“There are very few universalizing truths that are, in reality, actually universalizing. Some theologists will tell you that there are many, but in reality, all men only actually adhere to a few. One of them is this: At one point in time, usually early on, every many on the face of our planet has asked himself the question, “What am I going to do with my life?”
“You and I want our years to mean something. Anything. And so we try to answer the question. Many have answered with “Something big.” Others have answered it with “Whatever I want.” And still others have yet to answer this question or never find an answer to it at all. I think that when a man finds the answer to this query, it changes in the course his life. When you’re a small child, all you want is to be a fairy princess or a lion tamer or a superhero. When you get older, you realize that that was just simply ridiculous. What you really want to be is a rockstar or a doctor or an astronaut. And then, you get to the point where you grow up and become rational (or as rational as human beings can be), and figure out what you would like to do as a career. And that’s your answer. Fireman, accountant, psychologist – that’s what you say when someone asks you what you want to do with your life.
“As for me, I don’t believe that your career is what you actually do with your life. What does that even mean? Does it mean how many people you help before you leave this world and enter the “afterlife” (whatever form of said afterlife you believe in)? Does it mean how much money you make or how many children you have or what kind of neighborhood you live in before you die? I believe that everyone has to decide this for themselves.
“One thing I’ve realized is that people are too easily distracted. We let silly things like laziness and pride deter us from our dreams. If life is a road, we all end up dead. We look to the side every time there’s an accident, end up in the wrong lane, and have to exit the highway. And then, because it would take much too much effort to even try to get back on, we just give up and end up with an eternal stay at Bed and Breakfast.
“Life is short. In fact, everyone in the world has a short life, in perspective. We are born, we live, and then we die. We can’t really help the way we are born, or die for that matter, but what we can help is the way we live. That’s what you do with your life. What people see when they look back on everything you did from the day you came to the day you left. What you can say about your existence as you look back on everything. What’s important to you matters more than anything. Figure out what that is, and then go after it and don’t stop until you’ve achieved it.
“For many people, the answer to the question (“What am I going to do with my life?”) is something simple. Raise a family, be a good Christian, help people, have fun, open a business, become famous…the list goes on. But what I’ve learned is that, in reality, everyone has the same answer. No matter where you’re from, what background you have, how good of a person you are, or what kind of career you want in life – the answer is always the same.
“And that answer is to change lives and make a difference.
“No one wants to leave this earth and be forgotten. That’s another universalizing truth: no one wants to be forgotten. Our instinct as human is to want to do great things in life. Whether those great things happen to be very small or very big, it doesn’t matter – they can be both. Some of the greatest things are in fact the smallest things. If you want to life a life reflecting the God you believe in, that’s great. That means you want to make a difference in this world, just like your God did. Every man wants to leave an impact on society. We want our existence to mean something, to mean that our years were well spent. And I honestly don’t think that everyone’s life says that they left an impact. Some people die without ever knowing what they believe, or what they were meant to do. And that is one of the saddest things I’ve ever had to come to terms with.
“But I know one thing: I’m not going to be one of those people. I’m going to change lives and make a difference. That’s what you want, too – in whatever way or whatever words you say it in. You want to tattoo the world with your presence and make sure that it’s never erased. Because that would make all of your suffering and all of your pain worth going through, just to realize that it all made the tiniest, insignificant difference in the world. To know that earth wouldn’t be the same place if you had never entered it.
“And the world could really use some change.”
–Bethany Smith, May 2012
Photo: Bethany in July of 2012, on her second trip to Haiti. Since then she’s been on several more trips to Haiti, and served on mission teams to Kenya and Ecuador as well. For those of you who don’t know, she’s currently a nurse at Duke Hospital and working on her Nurse Practitioner degree.
