Like many people, I always thought my life would follow a predictable sequence, that I would arrive at certain milestones within a certain timeframe. That during my four years of college I would finally get it together, end my struggle with my weight and get skinny, then God would lead me to meet the man I wanted to one day marry. That school would then flow effortlessly into a fun and invigorating career of some sort, followed by my dream wedding and of course, the purchase of our first home, and possibly, maybe, only if we both wanted and only after several years of enjoying marriage, the birth or adoption of a child. And in my head, though I didn't assign a hard timeline, I always imagined it would happen by the time I was thirty. I would keep in touch throughout this process with all my best friends from high school whilst making new lifelong friends in college that would blend seamlessly into one large social group. I would finally become good friends with my sister, and with the far-flung members of my family that I only saw sporadically. Everything would come together into a neat and tidy package, and from then on, life would be nothing but work, love, fun, and friendship. And they lived happily ever after. The End.
I have a pretty active imagination, but I NEVER imagined it would take me three colleges, four majors, and eight years to earn my two bachelor's degrees. That my weight would reach new highs with a few brief periods of temporary weight loss in between. That I'd have a twelve-year drought in my dating life that would only be broken by a brief mockery of a relationship, followed by a handful of disappointments that never quite reached actual dating status. That I would achieve a huge job dream--working for a non-profit in a cause close to my heart--only to become utterly disillusioned and burnt out, and end up falling back on a job I found minimally tolerable and hardly fulfilling. That I'd still be doing that job four years later, feeling stuck, and enrolling in community college for a two-year certificate that would give me a more marketable skill set. That today I'd be pushing thirty-four and contemplating the age at which it is no longer considered dignified for a woman to wear a pouf-y white dress down the aisle, should she manage to one day make it there at all, and that the answer to that question would mean I'd also have to think about the steadily closing window of reproductive opportunity as the years advance, though I have also had serious doubts about my suitability as a parent as well. And that being single and under-employed, with eight years' worth of college loans, would make purchasing a home on my own virtually impossible for the length of my repayment period, at least.
Along the way, I lost friends I thought would be in my life until we were old and gray, and I made new friends only to suffer more saddening losses. I continued to struggle with the relationship I have with my sister, and to have only a minimal idea of what is going on in my other relatives' lives. Nothing came together the way I had imagined. For those failures, I railed against both God and my own nature. Though there were (and are) a LOT of good things going on in my life, it was hard to feel positively about myself when the critical voice inside my head said I had to be the biggest misfit ever to live. A failure, disappointment, loser, freak.
Then I came across a concept that completely changed my thinking about this seemingly disjointed conglomeration of experiences that make up my life.
In an article for CNN titled "A Creative Life is a Healthy Life," author Amanda Enayati defines iteration as "a design concept which involves the continuous prototyping, testing, analyzing, and refining of an idea or product."
What if my life is in iteration? I began to imagine that the various growth-inducing events and stages of my life were actually iterations. I was Kelli version 1.0 . . . then Kelli 1.5 . . . then Kelli 2.0 . . . every iteration spurred by whatever lesson I learned or choice I made in the face of difficulty or change. One of my very best friends pointed out that I should ask myself what changes I wanted to make, rather than stressing over the expectations of my critical inner voice and well-meaning family and friends. Life is a process, and I will never have achieved all the things I imagine I should.
I realized that though reality did not meet expectation, I was actually ok.
And one night I opened a fortune cookie, and the universe (or God, if you like) seconded my epiphany with this message:
"You will make many changes before settling down happily."
This blog is dedicated to the idea of iteration and growth, written in a spirit of shared human sympathy, fun, love, and friendship. Please share your thoughts along the way.
--Kelli
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