Value of Life

Goals are what make life worth living. We may be content with things as they are, and things may be good, but we need hope to look forward to the future. To realize that I have lived only such a small part of my life so far is strange. Am I me yet? When I look at my parents, I hardly even consider their teenage selves to be the same people. The rest of their lives are so much more significant to me. Then, in terms of myself, I wonder how it is that I’m not even really living my life yet (at least in the way of which I am speaking). Perhaps these thoughts of mine wouldn’t even make sense to anyone but me, but these are things I ponder, nevertheless.
Even though I love my life now, and I would never wish to fast-forward though high school and college, I am so desperately curious about what will come after. I do have a sort-of dream life that I hope comes true. After all, you only live once.
The thing I want more than anything else is to be able to believe in God. I have been raised Catholic, went to Catechism class, and until the past year or so, my family went to church every Sunday. However, as much as I want to believe in God, I just don’t. There is nothing I can help about it. I know I can’t sit and read the Bible and suddenly have some sort of epiphany. When it comes to it, I just can’t truly say that I believe in God. Although I consider myself agnostic (I can’t bear to consider myself an atheist), I will still be very defensive of Catholicism. I can’t help but feel that IF there were to be a God, the Catholic story is the right one. It is part of my heritage, after all. I think it is terrible when atheists look down on those with faith. I think to have that kind of faith must be the most incredible thing. Faith in God is what keeps so many people going. It is a kind of ultimate hope; we have something good even after this life, and our lives have meaning. To me, it doesn’t really matter what religion someone is. It is that faith that I envy, and I hope that by the time I reach the end of my life, I have that faith.
Perhaps just as important to me is family. I want to fall in love, get married, and have children. I don’t want to get old and die without these things. I am sure this is some sort of compulsion to be just like my own family. After all, this is exactly what my parents did. They met in college and got married the September after my mom graduated. I am the youngest, with two older brothers, and I want older boys and younger girls, just like my own family. Though, of course, I will be the diplomatic pregnant woman who just says she wants a healthy baby, and gender doesn’t matter. I know there is the possibility that I won’t get married. Even if I don’t, though, I still want children. I think, also, more people should adopt. There are so many children who don’t have families. As with many problems that aren’t in people’s faces though, people are content to push this reality to the backs of their minds. Also, certainly, it is part of human nature for people to want their own flesh and blood. After all, the importance of continuing family lines has been perhaps the most important thing to humanity throughout the ages. However, now, I think we all just want love in our lives. Careers and other goals are great, but alone, those things don’t matter.
I certainly do have more professional aspirations as well. My most important goal, career-wise, is just to love my job. The problem is that the things I want to do wouldn’t allow me to have a 9 to 5 job. I’m not sure how well this would fit with my dream family-life, but I won’t worry about that yet. I definitely want a job on the international scope. I would love to work for the government. In keeping with this goal, I want to study abroad in college and become fluent in another language. I love foreign languages. I’ve had Spanish class since first grade, and took Spanish up until this year. I reached honors and AP levels, and I really loved it. I am now in my fourth year of Latin, now at honors level. Latin is a different sort of language. We never actually speak in Latin, except in reading things out loud, and hardly compose Latin ourselves. However, the translation is like a puzzle. We just finished translating Ovid’s “Daphne and Apollo.” I think it is incredible that I can understand this poetry from ancient Rome. All last year, too, I took an Irish Gaelic class for an hour and a half a week. Perhaps the biggest struggle was pronunciation, which wasn’t even something I had thought of. Having taken Spanish since age seven, pronunciation was not a recent problem for me. To see foreign combinations of letters was hard, but eventually, I got the hang of it. I am proud of that. When all the different language classes did their presentations, I was excited to get up and stage a conversation in Irish with my classmates. A lot of people didn’t even realize that an Irish language existed, and they certainly hadn’t heard it spoken before! I also loved to see the other classes’ presentations (It was such a disappointment when the Modern Greek class just danced instead of speaking!). I meant to take Arabic this year, but I forgot about signing up until it was too late! Through this explanation, I have realized that my goals are rather intertwined. I want to continue studying languages, and certainly to be fluent in something other than English. Since the beginnings of education, people have been studying other languages, and sending their children to other countries to do so. To live in another country is therefore an experience I will certainly have. This will fit in rather well with my career goals. I want to work for the federal government in diplomacy, and knowledge of languages would be a key asset, if not a requirement. Though everyone has different career goals, everyone wants self-fulfillment. To have a job I love, whether my goals change, is what is most important.
Finally, ultimately, I want to die happy. I hope that in life I can realize if I’m not happy, I should do something to fix that. Goals may change, and that is okay. If I’m on a path to something I no longer have passion for, I hope I can be brave enough to realize that. My brother majored in civil engineering his whole freshman year of college. Then he realized that what he really wanted to do was landscape architecture. This is perfect for him. Even though he has to be in college an extra year to get enough credits, he still changed his major, so he will love his career. Even when people go through mid-life crises, it can be a good thing. If someone is not happy with what they are doing, why shouldn’t they make a radical change? Ultimately, people want to be happy, and this is what all other goals play into. There will always be those few people who lead incredible lives of innovation and philanthropy and change the world. However, for everyone else, it is enough to just be happy. That is what makes life good.