Finding Myself By If a eulogy is a commentary on how a person lived their lives, then I am scared to write my own. I’m not worried about what people would say. I am not a bad person, and my actions aren’t reflected as one either. It is probably the opposite. I am confident that at funeral my parents and friends would have only good things to say about me. I really am not worried about what people would say. What scared me most is that they would say the wrong thing. The wrong thing? I am not even sure I really know what that means. But I am not concerned with figuring that out fight now. I only want to focus on what I am sure of, and I’m sure there is off with me. I’m not ashamed to say it anymore, but I am not happy. My unhappiness arises from the one simple fact about the unhappiness of all men– “that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.” (Why we need to slow down our lives by Pico Lyer – Moreau FYE Week 1. I tend to overthink, and it causes me a lot of stress. I was not always this way though. I turned anxious throughout my life, during a process that I did not know was happening, and when I finally realized it, I was too late to stop it. Since then I have been living with my anxiety, aware of it, and trying my hardest to unlearn it. While doing so, I have realized that I am not the same person as I was a kid. Now I realize that everyone changes, and no one ever is the same, but I know what I feel, and that’s why I’m scared people will say the wrong thing at my eulogy. All my actions, all my words, all my doings, although they are not bad or mean or anything like that, do not feel like an authentic expression. https://ideas.ted.com/why-we-need-a-secular-sabbath/ The past year and a half of my life I have been focusing all my effort on trying to find myself again, and it’s a process that I have learned a lot from. The beginning was all about me and by myself. For a long time, finding myself was something that I thought I could only do alone, and the only way to make any progress was to find the answers by reflecting on my life. I’ve since learned that there is a wrong way to be introspective. Often while I’m thinking I ask myself why. Why did I let this happen to myself, why did I do that, why did I say that, and the why’s go on, but they need to stop. Frankly, “Why questions can draw us to our limitations” (The Right Way to be Introspective (Yes There’s a Wrong Way) By Tasha Eurich - Moreau FYE Week 6). To me, they are validation that something is wrong with me and I am not making this all up, but that’s all they’re telling me. I’m left with a problem without an answer and that’s the limitation. The problem that is all I think about, and in philosophy this year I learned the term “Ergo Sum Cognito” – I think therefor I am. By only thinking about the problem, I am the problem. After I realized that, I knew this was not something I could figure out along. Albert Einstein said you can not solve a problem with the same mindset that created it, and so I looked to new outlets to help shift my perspective on my situation. One very useful tool is talking to others. Just like out conversations in week 5, I have had many similar conversations with a friend named Jay, my mom, and my brother to better understand my situation. They are helpful, but they weren’t always. My first couple conversation I had with people I found myself just spewing out the same thought patterns that I was thinking, which was dumb, because just as the why mindset was no https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ https://ideas.ted.com/the-right-way-to-be-introspective-yes-theres-a-wrong-way/ help to me, the why mindset was no help in my conversations with others. My first conversations made no progress. I spend my time talking trying as hard as I could to convince the other person that I am not the same person as I was before and giving them every reason as for why. The only thing this made clear for me was a strong distinction between the self I am now and the self I was. This clarity only led to more confusion. In a way, these two concepts of self were two different jurisdictions, and when I talked myself into this place I felt helplessly confused. “It is in this place where we judge the other and feel the impossibility of anything getting bridged. The gulf too wide and the gap too distant, the walls grow higher, and we forget who we are meant to be” (Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, S.J. - Moreau FYE Week 7). And it’s true. Maybe my old self was judging my current self, but what I can attest for is the memory of a clear feeling of lostness and a worry that I will never feel like myself again. Asking why to myself led me to asking why to others and asking why to others led me to realizing that I had to stop asking why. Instead, I had to start focusing on what was happening to me. It’s probably true that all my thinking and contemplating was just a ploy to keep myself distracted from all the things that make me feel anxious. But I feel like these are not problems I should think myself out of. I believe they are problems I should tackle head on because “it’s actually in facing the darkest realities of life that we find light in them.” (Meet the nun who wants you to remember that you will die by Ruth Graham - Moreau FYE Week 3). If I wanted to find answers, I had to start focusing on what makes me anxious, do them mindfully, and trust that in this process I will find the answer I have been looking for. https://canvas.nd.edu/courses/39614/files/523975?module_item_id=167990 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/us/memento-mori-nun.html For all my life I have been avoiding my problems and look where that has gotten me. There is nothing productive in overthinking an answer. I was trying too hard to understand a question that doesn’t have an answer. There is nothing I can think to myself or anything someone can say to me to make me understand this problem I am trying to solve. I like to relate this to a religion called Taoism, and in toaism there is the toa. The Toa is pretty much what I have been trying so hard to solve, but the catch is that in the religion they say that Toa is not something you can put into words, and if you think you can then you do not have to Tao. This is a piece of wisdom that I really like, and it has led to stop running from my problem and start facing them. I have been using college as a time to put myself in uncomfortable positions so I can grow and learn about myself. Learning about myself is really the first step to a life well lived. “You have to know yourself first - your values, interests, personality, and skills (VIPS) - before you can make effective career choices.” (Navigating Your Career Journey Moreau First Year Experience Course - Moreau FYE Week 4). And that is really what I have been trying to do from the very beginning. I was always trying to learn about myself, but I just wasn’t doing it the right way. I am confident that I am on the right track, and I am sure that I will regain the sense of self I know I used to have. One this note, Father Hesburgh said “Since the age of six, all I wanted to be a priest… I was never the kid playing firemen in the back yard. There wasn’t a moment when I chose it. The priest hood was my calling.” (Hesburgh Produced by Jerry Barca and Christine O’Malley– Moreau FYE Week 2). Father Hesburgh had a sense of self that I envy greatly, and it’s the same kind that I am trying to achieve. https://undergradcareers.nd.edu/navigating-your-career-journey---moreau/ https://notredame.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=10159379-7eca-4549-8581-ab9500c9ecd9 I am sorry that this was not really a eulogy, but I just didn’t feel like that was something I was able to write without saying this first.