Have I Changed?

The pressure to be profound is, well, profoundly amazing.

Every morning I hit snooze on my alarm and wonder if this will be the day. The day that too much steam builds up in my pressure cooker of a mind and the world discovers I'm a fraud. The day someone looks at me and says, "This girl isn't any different than when she left." Or, "Yeah, she's different, but not in a good way." Aside from a new tattoo, a nice tan, and a serious need for a haircut, outwardly I look the same.

And if you ask me if I feel the same or not, I would probably have to tell you that I have no idea. Being aware of and being able to correctly identify my feelings has never been my strong point. What I can tell you I know for sure that I feel is this: I am terrified. As scary as it seems to quit your jobs and move to a foreign country with complete strangers for a few months, coming home is even more intimidating. It feels like a test for a class I've never attended. Because this is where the real hard work happens.

It may be hard to go out of your comfort zone, speak Afrikaans and try to earn the right to a place in someone else's culture, to live your mission, as Experience Mission likes to say. But it's even harder, if you ask me, to live your mission in your comfort zone. Here it's not as glamorous or exciting to dutifully act as I should, to suffer gladly, to speak in love words that bring life, to go the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, to live as if every thought and every action matter.

And so I'm left to wonder, as people ask me all about my trip, waiting expectantly for the profound wisdom I gained during my travels: Have I changed? Or has it just been a change of environment?

The more I think about this, the more I've come to believe that while the change in environment was a catalyst for personal growth and change, it's not dependent on the environment. Because it's a choice. Daily, I get to choose whether I will live as intentionally as I did in South Africa, if I will choose to die to myself, if I will walk in humility or pride. It doesn't matter if I've "changed" or not (what does that really even mean, anyway?), what matters is what I choose to be each day.

Aristotle believed that we are the sum of our actions, so maybe it's not about some monumental life change that's easily visible and tangible. Maybe it's how we chose to think and act and live each day. Maybe it's about hearing people's stories and getting to know them. If anything in this world has changed me, it has been people, not experiences.

So if you truly want to know about these last few months don't ask me about what I did, ask me about who I met. If you ask me what I did, I might not know what to say, and the answer will probably fall flat. But if you ask me about who I met, I think you'll see that it was not just a change of environment because the people we love change our hearts and it is only once our hearts are changed that our actions follow suit. You see, life isn't about amassing profundities, although the pressure to do so is intense – it's about people, plain and simple.