Lessons Learned Since Graduating College, Part Two
also known as That Moment You Start Windex-ing Cockroaches.
{This was originally posted on my friend’s blog who gathered thoughts from many different people in this stage of life. Feel free to check it out!}
Life can be haphazard. Not a perfect cookie cutter moment at every turn. You think it’s going to be all one way and it turns out to be totally different.
For example: cockroaches.
When you start hunting for your first place “on your own,” you have dreams and “must haves.” But you start browsing online and you get this sinking feeling that some of your “needs” really just are luxuries. You realize that while you might have a paycheck in your hand that is more money to your name than you have ever seen at one time, you also have to make that baby stretch. Far. And housing, well, it’s expensive.
So you move into an apartment complex that isn’t the nicest, but where you feel mostly safe. You make do with what you have, and you add your homey touches so that it feels cozy. You deal with maintenance people when your air conditioning freaks out at you and you pay your bills on time. Because after all, you just learned what a credit score is, and it’s crazy important that you get this one right.
And everything is bright and sunshiney and going well so far. Until one day you see him. Running across your kitchen window sill. Yep, a cockroach.
You panic.
After freaking out, and stalking a few days, the entire family has moved in and multiplied and before you know it you are staying awake until all hours of the night removing every item you have in your kitchen (and spraying those dang cockroaches with Windex) in hopes that a) you might get around to washing them all because that’s nasty, and b) the pest control people will be in there bright and early to really exterminate them. Because – repeat after me – ain’t nobody got no time for that.
How do you get rid of cockroaches? Who knows. At least they’re the small ones, and they don’t crunch when you kill them. But still, that’s just not something I learned in my college classes. I took a mere three science classes during college. No cockroach knowledge for me. No thank you.
So you make things up. You laugh and you stack every last pot on your free end tables you scored from that trash pile out back and you laugh again with your roommates and you realize that life – it’s pretty messy sometimes.
After all, you don’t know everything. And that’s a good thing. Which brings me to one of the next things I learned… that my parents were right all along, and that I still have a long way to go.
Lesson Three: I Know Nothing.
I don’t know that I ever thought for sure that I knew everything, but I did. I thought I knew everything. I wouldn’t have said that out loud; I might not have even acknowledged that that was the case. But once I realized I didn’t know anything… I realized I once must have thought that I did.
Somewhere along the line I had fallen into the self-esteem trap that I am totally awesome and the solution to all of the problems in the world. That’s extreme, and pretty exaggerated, but it’s what roughly was translated from lessons in school. I had a piece of paper in hand that said I was qualified. I knew the answers because I had spent years inside a classroom debating theories about the world.
Not all of those things are bad. Necessarily.
But once I moved into the “real world” phase of my life, I learned that I don’t know much of anything actually. I mean, I do. I am generally competent, have lived for two and a half decades, and have gone through many life experiences. But compared to many, many other people in this world, I have a lot to learn.
I almost hated myself that I finally had realized I didn’t really know much. But I had that same beautifully shrinking feeling I get when I stand and look into the vast ocean – a small girl looking into a big world. It was liberating.
I was both humbled and in awe. Humbled – that there is so much more to go in life, and because I once thought I knew all the answers. In awe – of what else I have left to see, experience, and learn. Relatively speaking, I know nothing. There is a lot of wisdom in the world, and I’ve just scratched the surface.
Lesson Four: Community Matters.
When I realized I knew nothing, I found that others did. They know a lot. There is a lot to learn from those around me. I once felt like a big fish in a small pond; I now feel like a fish swimming around other fish who may or may not know their end destination, or if they’re even swimming the right way. I’m free to be me. I’m free to not know. That ocean – it’s pretty big.
And man, I have a lot of people to learn from.
The thing that kept me sane during my first year out of college was my community. I’m not talking about the people I happened to live nearby, which was a few thousand. I’m talking about the kind of community that is intentional. Authentic. The community that loves Jesus like no one’s business and is going to be darn sure that I continue to seek Him when things get messy and I don’t know the answers.
It’s so hard to find. So hard sometimes. But it’s worth it. My community – they loved me well. Besides the anchor that I clung close to (which was Jesus, that lesson comes later), if I hadn’t had community around me for those first few months especially, even though they knew nothing about me and I knew nothing about them, I probably would have gone insane.
I had to seek it out. I had to be willing to be open. I had to be willing to let others in. I had to be willing to hear from them and to cry. They saw me in some of my darkest moments that year. But man, they listened, and they love Jesus, and that made all the difference in the world.
When you come to this place where you realize that cockroaches are real and the ocean is pretty big, you can start to feel a little lost. Things get a little crazy and your general outlook is hazy. But you have to be willing to find those people. Find those people who will be yourpeople.
You’ll want someone to vent to. And you’ll want people who will make you laugh at it all. Because after all, that’s some of the good in it. You just have to take them as they come, walk with Jesus, and figure it out along the way. Just don’t walk it alone.