Friends

Checks and Balances

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

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If there is one thing I’ve come to firmly believe – more and more everyday – over the past few years, it is that people are put into our lives for a reason. There is a system of checks and balances put in place by the powers that be (God, fate, destiny, what have you). Some of it might be random, some of it might be by design (not ours, of course), but however it happens, it happens for a reason.

For instance, say our grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, or friends…well, suck. Check. The balance is that in some other area of our lives we will find someone who fills that void. It may come in the form of a mentor, a teacher, a coach, a friend, a college roommate, a colleague, or a mix match of family members and friends who fill roles they weren’t born into.

This is one of the beauties of life. In one aspect, maybe more, we may be lacking. Yet, in another, maybe many others, we are blessed beyond our wildest imaginings with people who love and support and care and defend us to the nth degree. These are the people I call my family. Whether we are related by blood or by respect and affection, family is what they are.

In this sense, I believe the old saying “You can’t choose your family” gets thrown right out the window and proves the exact opposite. We can choose our “family” and they can choose us in return. It’s all a part of the system of checks and balances – what we lack, we find elsewhere and we hold onto it as dearly and as long as we can and are meant to. Of course people are going to come in and out of our lives, what matters are the things we learn from them and the place they filled in our lives, for whatever purpose and whatever length of time.

Leave or Be Left Behind

Posted on by Kaylin Stravalli

So here’s what I’ve been struggling with lately…

It’s five years after high school graduation, two years after college (at least for me) and my friends are scattering. Friends from grade school. Friends from high school. Friends from college. They’re all going and doing different things. Some are graduating from medical or physical therapy school. Some are off to law school. Others are getting married and still others are finding jobs and/or moving away.

Things are changing and I just don’t quite know what to make of them. That is not to say that I expect everything and everyone to stay the same as they always were. Not at all. Actually, I expect them to change and want them to as well. Change can and most times is good (although sometimes only in retrospect; you know the saying – hindsight is always 20/20). But these changes are the biggest yet and the fact that everyone around me seems to be having some life altering changes occur in their lives while I have yet to have any of a similar kind is creating some tension and frustration in my life.

There are times when everything seems fine and normal. I go about my business and try to figure out my next moves at a comfortable pace. Then I see of my friends old or newer, who are doing one of the aforementioned wonderful things and I take a look at my life.

I’m not using my degree. I am living with my parents. I’m hanging out with roughly the same people I have for most of my life, with some great additions. I take a look at these things and think to myself, Well, I may not use my degree at work much but I use it every time I write something or read something and mentally edit it and when I think through problems and scenarios, analyzing them and breaking them down to the best conclusion or next best question I can. And thank God my parents let me live with them or I’d be broke and living out of my car. And how great it is to still have people in my life from various stages, who know me and have seen me in every facet good and bad of my being and still love me. But then I wonder. If I’m so smart and capable and I’m in such a good place and I have such great relationships, then why do I feel as if I’m going nowhere and doing nothing with my life?

Then rational or not the answer comes:

Basically, my life is not so different than it was at 13 or 16 or 18 (with the exception of not having a curfew and being able to drink). And realizing this makes me feel as if I’m being left behind, as if everyone else is moving on, moving forward, accomplishing their goals and conquering their dreams, and I’m….here. In the same place I’ve been for most of my 24 years.

It’s not as thought I’ve not done some of the accomplishing and conquering myself. I managed to graduate college early, paid off my student loans already, and bought my first car. Yet I feel stuck sometimes, like I’m not accomplishing as much as everyone else I know or those my age. I feel like I’m not doing what I should be.

Then another part of me speaks up and says, “None of the greats ever went down the path most travelled. In fact, they all but said screw it and did whatever they wanted and achieved greatness in their own way, in their own time.” That is a comforting thought that I hold near and dear to my heart, that is until the next time I see one of my friends I haven’t in a while because he or she is off doing spectacular things with his or her life, and I’m right back where I started. I know I’m not the only one to ever feel this way but…

I still feel like my choice is leave or be left behind.