"What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you will never get to see."
This is a line from a song that I have been thinking for quite some time now, and it makes me reevaluate if the kind of life that I am living is really aligned to my highest calling. But the thing about it is, how will you recognize your highest calling anyway?
It's definitely not engineering, nor is it educating. Although while I love solving problems, and sharing what I learned, time and circumstance have made it possible for me to reach that point of enlightenment.
My legacy, as time and circumstance have revealed to me, would be in stories. I just have, a lot. Rather, too much in fact. And this is the year where I decide to little by little, tell all of them.
Unapologetically.
Untaintedly.
As best as I can.
I realized that the only hurdle I encounter when it comes to sharing my story, is fear.
For instance, the fear of being judged. It's like wearing a skimpy dress. There will always be that risk of being judged, when you go a bit truthful, when you go a little bit bare, when you start revealing things that are a bit more intimate than usual. That's what happens when you share your story in a platform for all the readers to see. The stories you tell are bits and pieces of your soul that you choose to leave behind.
However, the opposite is not healthy to do as well. If all of us had our masks on, we also wouldn't have the opportunity to genuinely connect with other human beings. Nothing extraordinary would come to be without risking sounding and looking like an idiot in the first place. And I have looked like an idiot on the internet for far more times than I could count.
Maybe you could say that I was created with a higher risk appetite than most, which often comes out as oversharing. In the same way I feel things a little bit deeply than most, and could almost never know how to shut off my brain when the overthinking feedback loop from hell starts. It's both a blessing and a curse.
I still get mixed feelings whenever someone commends me for being brave whenever I share about something I deeply care about, because there will always be that voice in my head that will word out my insecurity or fear. There is the fear that my story will be used against me, or that people will find me unreliable, invalid, and they will reject me for it.
The rejection part hurts, but I am learning that it is better that way than putting on a facade. I always do my best to be the person in the room that tries to word out what most people have difficulty of articulating.
Some of my stories will be sad, some of it will be about grieving, some of it will be about my incessant and messy pursuit of hope and meaning, but at least it will be truthful.
I have learned from my more intentional role now as a storyteller that when it comes to how we view the world, there is nothing more powerful than the stories we tell ourselves.
Stories shape the world, and the narratives we tell ourselves, shape how we relate to the world. So if there is any narrative that I would rather choose to believe, it's the narrative on hope--
the hope that died on the cross, so that we may live.
This is the one huge change that I am now announcing in this space-- that I have decided to be more intentional (and loud) in embodying love. And the way I am going to do that is to follow the author of love Himself through my pursuit of Christianity.
I choose to believe the narrative that inspires lightness, empathy, compassion, grace, faith, hope, love, and peace.
Never in my wildest dreams would I wake up to the day I would use these words on a regular basis, where I would replace words in my vocabulary such as heaviness, despair, anger, frustration, anxiety, numbness, patterns, problems and pain for the former.
And while it is true that all these still exist, as it is so in this broken world we live in, so is hope.
Hope exists, friends. And as much as I want to take credit for finding it, believe it or not, it found me 💛.
My only hope? Is that the stories that I am going to share in this platform will provide a sense of comfort, will remind you of hope, to combat all the jadedness there is in this world. And even though we don't know each other that well, even if you don't believe in the same things I do, always know that you are loved.
We're all in this together, araso?
Roxanne Marie is the twenty-year-old something who calls herself the Protean Creator.
She is a chemical engineer by profession, pole-dancer and blogger by passion and frustration, and lastly, a life enthusiast. She is on a mission to rediscover her truth through the messy iterative process of learning, relearning and unlearning. Currently, she works as a science and research educator and writer in her hometown, Tagbilaran City, all the while documenting her misadventures, reflections and shenanigans as a working-class millennial here on Hive.
If you like her content, don't forget to upvote and leave a comment to show some love. It would be an honor to have this post reblogged as well. Also, don't forget to follow her to be updated with her latest posts.