Beyond What’s Next
What’s next?
For most of my life, this question has thrummed in the back of my mind incessantly, asking what will you do next? What will you dream next? What will you achieve next? Even as I hustled through high school, danced with reckless abandon on the sticky wooden dance floor of my college bar, swam in the ocean with my Marshallese students, and stepped into adulthood, the question ignited me: what’s next? This question fueled my future, and I’m grateful for this energizing mantra that built the present that surrounds me.
But it also hung so relentlessly, nagging so loudly that life’s littlest moments and biggest accomplishments have always been shrouded in a touch of discontent. What if I wasn’t challenging myself enough? If I didn’t dream bigger, I’d be trapped in the small communities I saw as temporary stopovers forever. If I didn’t achieve more, my life would be wasted. And so I continued to look to the future: what’s next? I’m not ungrateful for what others saw as drive, what was termed my biggest strength: achiever. I have traveled the world, learned surrounded by the best, and celebrated accomplishments I’m incredibly proud of, thanks in large part to this drive that propelled me. But at times the drone of this question has been exhausting. At times all I wanted was to immerse myself contentedly in the present with no concern for what’s next. The question created a push and a pull within me, both energizing and exhausting, all the while launching me into the next big thing.
For the last few months, my husband Frank and sister Cassidy–the only people on this planet who can hear the echo of this question that surrounds me at all times–have searched for the spark that usually inspires what’s next–the next big thing to light my belly on fire and propel me once again into the future. And for the first time, I don’t feel energized and exhausted by the question.
For some reason, as they poked and prodded, instead of lighting up, I shut down. Only after several months of brushing off their attempts to lure me into fantasizing about the future did I realize the question of what’s next had faded. For the first time in memory, I wasn’t energized and pressured by the future because I was so fulfilled by the present. In fact, I found myself so blissfully content with my tiny family and my gloriously messy life, that thoughts of what next seemed to elicit a primordial reaction in me. Fear of change, fear that I would embark on an endeavor that might jeopardize my perfectly imperfect world sent my body into fight or flight mode. For the first time ever, I found myself fleeing from the next big thing.
Why, you ask? Because the present contains the most amazing things: I spend every day of my life with my best friend I grew up with and the best friend I chose. I live in a beautiful home, and my dinner table (in the absence of COVID-19) is surrounded by loved ones most nights a week. The friends who shaped and stretched and supported me throughout some of the most formative years of my life continue to do so despite hundreds of miles and years of distance. I love what I do, and the success of recent projects has confirmed the strength of rural communities and the value of rural innovation I chose to believe in through the highs and lows of my career thus far. And the birth of Josie Rue breathed a new purpose into my life unlike anything I have ever known. Until I had Josie, I had never before fully immersed myself in a moment in time; until I held that sweet little girl, with her goofy hair and lopsided smile, in my arms, I could only mute the tv that played endlessly in the background; I was unable to truly turn off the continuous programming–ads reminding me to reach further, commercials taunting me with to-do lists, sitcoms featuring varied versions of myself failing to meet my full potential. Josie Rue, in combination with all the joy that my friends, family, and role in my community bring me, unplugged the tv. Together, these things have shifted the unrelenting chorus of my life, turning “what’s next,” into “love is enough.” The love that fills and surrounds me is enough.
This shift has been unsteadying. Who am I without that tiresome mantra, “what’s next?” reverberating through me? Will I stall or stale if I stop myself from striving for more and instead thrive where I’m at? I’m slowly learning that what’s next needn’t be an incessant call to action, an exhausting reach for some new thing in the name of success. Instead, I’m learning that what’s next is an energizing catapult for the now and the next not held back by obligation or shame, but instead thrust forward with the love for my community, my loved ones, and myself. And all that love is enough.
