What do I want to do with my life?

Last Saturday, while driving down to Hawaii Kai for working out with my friends, we were discussing the futures of two of the girls who would be graduating this coming Saturday and their life plans. One of them remarked, "Yeah, I wish I had started thinking about this earlier. I mean, I did start thinking about this a year ago, but now I'm here and it's like, now I have to make all these big decisions about my life."

Of course, in time, the conversation turned to the rest of us and eventually to me. What did I want to do once I graduated?

I didn't have an answer for that. I don't know what I want to do once I graduate.

Part of the reason for my lack of an answer is situational: I can't tell you what I'll be doing once I get to the stage of my life where I am graduated. Will I be married? Will I have children? Will I be in a relationship? What will have shaped me in the next few years that I have until I graduate? What opportunities will be open to me?

This isn't like high school, where everything seemed cookie-cuttered into easy choices. The future is too vague for me to tell to see where I will be standing to even make those choices.

So I sat there, staring out the window, trying to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. All I could come up with is that I want to do something where I help people.

That's all I've really ever wanted to do. I've wanted to help people and I want to create things. Whether it's spiritually, physically, academically, financially, mentally, socially, I just want to help people.

I already know how to do that as a sister and friend and even eventually as a mother. I have lots of examples of that. Lots of wonderful, fabulous women who have shown me the impact they can have. I want to do that.

But part of me wants to do more. I want that same influence I see in other women around me to reach more than my family and those I interact with normally. I want to influence my community, I want to influence the world. I want to make it better.

I want to be heard, I want to be respected, I want to discuss and actually do things that can help the world.

I want to be the best person I can be. Whether I'm helping my future children or future children that aren't mine or not even children and just people, I want to make sure that I'm doing it to the best of my abilities.

I don't know what the future has in store for me. I will be just as happy being a mother and taking care of my family as I imagine I'd be out working and hopefully helping people. Or a combination of both. I just don't know how my life will work out.

The possibilities that lay before me right now are unimaginable. What I choose to follow is something I don't think I'll realize I'll have done until I get there. It will come from all the small choices I make now, fueled by my desires and the effort I put in.

So I'm going to go write my essay on free speech for my final exam so I'll get good grades so I'll continue to better myself for my future husband and children and everyone else I hope to influence for good.