Being in the moment
While living in Nicaragua, I entered my first year of high school with great excitement for my future. I was to follow in my dad’s footsteps and attend University in Italy. I wasted no time daydreaming and visualizing my future, which often drove me to give my best to my studies. Little did I know when I started the school year that I would not finish it and that my life would take a drastic turn. Towards the end of the year, while the country was still dealing with the civil war, young adults were being kidnapped and taken to remote areas, forcing them to join the military and go into battle. One day after school, there was an attempted kidnap on my life that served as “the straw that broke the camel’s back” for my parents. Before I knew it, we were at the American Embassy asking for a visa, and a few weeks later, I arrived in the USA.
Soon enough, the excitement of being in a new country faded, and questions about my future captured my daily thoughts. How am I going to get through High School without speaking the language? How am I going to make it into a University? How can I pay for such? These questions captured my mind and filled my spirit with an unhealthy dose of fear about the uncertainty of my future. Fear began to play a significant role, and the only way to not let it paralyze me was to attempt to gain absolute control of my circumstances. What it meant for me then was that I needed to learn the language fast and obtain the best possible grades to receive a scholarship. So I committed a hundred percent of my time to this process and studied every day until about two to three in the morning, waking up by six every morning to begin zero-period class at seven. I kept my routine for all four years, including a part-time job to help my family financially. I became obsessed with achieving my goal of entering University and removed everything else from my life. There was no time to build friendships and no after-hours fun activities. I was so worried about not being able to make it that I even got myself sick from stress, taking several trips to the doctor for constant painful stomach ulcer episodes.
Throughout my adult life, I struggled the most when dealing with uncertainty about my future and the possibility of failure. The thoughts of failure have had such a firm grasp, leading me to act with a hyper-focus mentality and a need to control circumstances as much as possible. These actions carried an immense sense of responsibility that weighed a ton on my shoulders, causing me to live in a consistently overwhelmed state. By the way, others could easily sense when I was experiencing high-intensity levels, affecting them as well. While living with this mindset, I often returned to my old behaviors of taking other aspects of my life for granted, such as relationships, my health (physically and mentally), and my spiritual walk, diminishing my quality of life and ability to be present at the moment. Although focusing on securing a better future is not necessarily bad, I often forget to enjoy the present and appreciate what I have in front of me.
In recent years, I began to rely more on my faith and witnessed how things would work out for the best regardless of whatever situation I dealt with. To remind myself and build more confidence and internal peace when things got tough again, I picked up journaling and captured portions of my journey and the victories won along the way. I also learned to become vulnerable with those closest to me and share my struggles as I faced them. This was not an easy practice. I initially felt very uncomfortable, mainly because I lived my life with pride and a big ego, so sharing my worries and being transparent with my struggles was difficult. My friends and family rallied around me and helped break apart the lies behind those fears. Instead of creating distance from them as it used to be my old habit, I got closer to them and built more profound and authentic relationships, feeling blessed for my life and BEING IN THE MOMENT versus always having my eyes on the future.
JC
Husband | Father | Founder at myTOD