Beginning the Journey

Once upon a time (for thus begins all journeys), as I was driving down the winding, wooded roads to Mankato for another week of college classes, a song began forming itself in the back of my mind. I don't remember how it went, for I had no way of writing it down or recording it, but I remember that it somehow wove into words the strange thing that was happening to me; that somehow, when I was at home, I felt (and acted, I am afraid) like a little girl, but as soon as I went back to my apartment at college, I was a woman again.

College is reputed to be, beyond a place of learning, a place where teens grow up into respectable citizens, and I think to some extent this is true. When you live out on your own, you are forced to pay your own bills, buy your own groceries, form and maintain your own friendships and fulfill your own commitments, and all these things foster the sense of responsibility that distinguishes the stereotypical teenagers from the grownups.

But what happens after college? Most of us nowadays move back home, at least for a while. Not, as the culture assumes, because we are lazy, but because it is the most financially responsible thing to do while we are paying off the debt we accumulated in college. However, the feeling of being a little girl when I went home for a weekend didn't go away when I moved home for good, and it became very easy to let the responsible woman that had developed in college give way to the immature girl.

The question was this: If I couldn't be a woman around my family, had I really become a woman at all? Or was it just an illusion? Or was it that I had set out on my journey of becoming a woman, and climbed the foothills easily, but was now being faced with the high and daunting mountain?

Having decided upon the latter answer, I decided that no matter how high the mountain looked, I was going to tackle it.

"Be who you are meant to be, and you will set the world on fire."
--Saint Catherine of Siena
 

This blog is the story of my journey. In it I will talk a lot about family, quite a bit about friends, somewhat about vocations, relationships as the subject proves relevant, a bit about music, work, general happenings and probably a multitude of other stuff that I can't foresee, all with a general undercurrent of the good old Catholic faith. For the goal of this journey, ultimately, is heaven.

I am writing for myself, for I cannot claim to be an expert of any kind, but I am also writing for anyone else who might want to come with me. Perhaps we can help each other.

For the title of this blog, a subject over which I have deliberated long without success, I have to thank two philosophy majors from NDSU; the first (who also happens to be my cousin) for suggesting the title, and the second for kindly translating it into Latin for me. Benigne dicis.

Once upon a time there was a girl...