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The Strength to Be


          The world of the millennial generation is chaos. There is always this need to do, to change, to go, to create, to produce, to always be moving. Our phones have gone from calling to doing everything we need at the tip of our fingers, and they are ever getting faster. Our attention spans have been shot down so far that we can't wait the five or ten minutes it takes to prepare a cheeseburger at a fast food joint without cocking an entitled attitude and attacking the restaurant with a bad review or making nasty comments on Facebook about your "bad service." We have become so wrapped up in all the things that we feel we have to do that we have forgotten how to interact with our fellow human beings. There is so much pressure on our generation to push above and beyond the last. We must climb to new heights, discover new things. We must "make a difference." But can we just be? Can we just sit for five minutes and not feel like we should be occupying our brains with useless Facebook posts or the latest news from Hollywood? Forget stopping to smell the roses! Do we even notice their existence?
          I say this as a warning- not a condemnation. And I am just as guilty of this as anyone. I am engaged to the most wonderful man in the world, someone I only dreamed I would get to meet and love. We have a beautiful storybook love story, and I wouldn't change anything about it. But I am one of those people who can get so caught up and focused on my own goals that I completely forget the existence of other people. It can get so bad that I will get frustrated at the slightest interaction with people because they are "distracting" me from what my brain feels is actually important. This is a weakness for me, and with the insanity of having thirteen weeks to plan a wedding when most women get thirteen months, I have lost myself. I have hidden behind what I always have to do. Almost every question is about the wedding or the showers or the songs or the honeymoon. I constantly have details and plans whizzing around in my head, and the chaos in my own mind has become so great that I am exhausted all the time. I am unmotivated anymore, and I was starting to wonder if I am even mature enough to get married. Can I truly care for someone and love someone? Because if there is anything I do not want to do, it is push away the love of my life in pursuit of some other goal that seems more important in that moment.   
            This is what it means to lose yourself- to be so lost in what there is to do that we forget the people that mean everything to us. In this moment, I have to search for myself and just find the strength to be. To exist without a plan for the next five minutes. To sit and stare out the window for no apparent reason. To be soft and slow and loving and romantic. To dream of things to come like a little girl dreams of her knight in shining armor. To just be still in this world of chaos and constant noise and movement. To refocus my mind and my heart on what is truly important. TO ask myself, "When I get to my deathbed, what do I want to look back and see?" To know that I want to see my husband and darling family and know that I loved them well and I genuinely cared for them. To know that I made a difference in my small little sphere of influence. That is my challenge to my generation. Just stop. Find the strength to just be. Remember the people you love. Remember the reason you are here in the first place. Remember that you were loved and adored before you were any of the things you think you have to become. You are. So just be.
        
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