Checking Out of the Rat Race

Let's just breathe for a minute. Woo. Sahh.

It's been a while. The last few weeks brought me a beautiful present, the end of a chapter. I was almost convinced it would never come. I am now a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science after five long years. In 2013 when I enrolled, I was a bright-eyed young girl from the Cayman Islands excited to take on the world of higher education, in hopes of becoming some sort of hero of a beloved people. Now in 2017, I am a bit wiser and I dare even say, I am a little jaded. I am rebel at heart, I rebel that is what I do. However, I thought that following the process this one time would yield the results I had longed for, but at the end of it, at the long awaited finish, I some how feel that I have been sadly mistaken.

Over the past years, I have found myself in and out of a rat race that to be honest, I don't remember signing up for or joining. I found myself aspiring to meet expectations of others who had little to no personal interest in me as an individual. I would then punish myself severely through negative self talk when I fell short of these expectations.  I ebbed and flowed in a constant state of highest highs and lowest lows.

Why would anybody willingly go through this? I think, if I am to take a stab at answering this question, my response would be because we all just want to be loved and understood. The more I reflect on these last years, I realise that much of the agony I felt was as much self-inflicted as it was communally bestowed. This conclusion comes from the fact that throughout this season, I have has always had people with me who have tried their endeavour best to support me in my dreams and goals. Yet, somehow I still allowed the minority to dictate my overall countenance. Instead of believing in and pursuing my dreams and aspirations, I found myself prisoner to the dictates of society.

I could go on and on about what this entails, some of which includes finding a profitable job, settling down and starting a family, but time is better spent on other things. Today marks a month to the date of finding out that I had successfully completed my graduate school journey. This actually blog post was started on June 22, 2017.  

But I digress, back to the task at hand. This month, this past year has made it clear that I don't belong in the rat race. I am a visionary, I am a believer, I am the dreamer. I checked into the rat race in search of freedom from poverty and source of identity. What I found instead was anxiety and great insecurity. I now know that I am allergic to monotony, that I loathe the expected as dictated by society, and that I am checking out of the rat race. The only thing I am expecting these days is the return of my Savior and until then I choose to live as a sojourner, seeking and living out the dreams He has placed in my heart.