Indomitable
Today Is My Birthday
We meet on a special day; today is my birthday. I have never written to you on my birthday before.
I am compelled to reflection on a special day like today. I am compelled to stand on language from a poem of his:
“If | you want | to get | to | your indomitable self | don’t | follow | the obvious roads!” The Coastal Road
In some perfect sense, I could end this letter here. I find this expression limitless.
But today is my birthday. I would do well to think about things.
Contemplations
I have recently had the fortune to explain a little about my life’s path a fair amount. I take it as a sign that I am arriving at a place where people want to know what I know and come to me for guidance. This is a blessing. I would often say something to the effect of: I have been fortunate to do some amazing things, and I’ve planned almost none of them.
I am starting backward in this quote. I am on less obvious roads. I have expressed before that living in DC is a symbol of victory for me. I think of it again now. At best, I had the idea that someday, somehow it could be awesome to live in DC. I could never have imagined how I would arrive here, when and how I did, and what I would do after arriving.
I could not have expected that I would live in Boston before this. I did not expect to move there with a romantic partner.
There is a version of me that would have been surprised to hear I would become an entrepreneur. That is decidedly a surprising moment in my life. It was the vision of the world after mission-complete that drove me to start that path. It was a discovery to find myself as an entrepreneur.
There was no way to know that I would help build a cultural center. I could have never guessed that I would make a publishing company.
I recall that there was a point in my life where I was monolingual. It seemed to be an impossible reality but a close wish to learn another language.
And with language, it is certainly unexpected that I would ever travel without a plan. 100 days of solo-travel would have seemed impossible to me at one point. Buying a one-way ticket anywhere simply seemed better for other people. I could never have anticipated the transformation there.
I also think I was right to resist the typical path others in my grad school cohort went for. It was difficult to embrace being really the only one who did not want to go into teaching (right away) or move into a Ph.D for literature.
These are all past-leaning things. As I reflect on them, I think of a question my excellent therapist brought to me recently: “How are you contributing to your futures?”
Moving the final moments of this birthday reflection future-leaning, I have come to find I can relinquish my anxiety by accepting I simply do not know what else is coming my way. If these memories I just shared above with you prove anything, it is that anything can happen. My shame of “not being where I should be in life” and anxiety for the future is a matter of not having a proper plan to get me “where I should be.”
But there is no should. I have already arrived. I am here. The best thing now is to accept there are many futures coming to me, and I apply acknowledgement to reframe how I have arrived here, in this rich, beautiful chapter of life in DC, and embrace how I am readying myself for more.
The Futures
This I attempt to answer, what am I doing to contribute to my futures?
Studying- I will continue to learn. Learning makes me want tomorrow. I still have the heart and mind to think of a second master’s, previously Oxford and now Johns Hopkins, but I see learning possible everywhere
People - I love meeting people and learning who they are. I cherish how they help me grow in love and as a person. I am meeting more people, and I am working on stay public and positioning myself to keep meeting others
Reading - that’s it. I adore reading entirely
Writing - I sometimes recall this HBR article about having two careers. I am arriving at clarity and seeing I will likely have two careers: leading and creating
Languages - I’m thankful for the ambition younger Trevor had to get certified in Italian and French. What a badass dude. I will keep them close as best I can, but I still want to learn others. Spanish is going well. I still want to get back to Amharic
Has my path thus far moved me toward becoming indomitable?
I inhale and speak it forward with resolve: yes. My heart is big. And even when I sometimes forget, the answer is still yes.
More soon,
Trevor
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