Zukunft

Today, somebody asked me what my vision for life is. That’s a big question. Think about it. Sometimes, we make goals. Lots of times we make to-do lists for the day or week. Many times, we make resolutions on New Years for the upcoming year. Our parents or teachers often ask for goals for the next 5 or even 10 years. But a vision for life? That’s huge. I mean, think about it. How hard is it to get everything done that we set for ourselves on New Year’s Eve? How hard is it to even do everything that we want to get done each day? Getting things done is hard, and I guess if we start way back at the beginning, thinking of things to get done is harder. It once took my sisters and me over a year for us to write down our short-term (5 year) goals when our dad asked for them. So, goals are difficult. Figuring out what we are going to do is really hard. Then, we have to remember that life isn’t always about what we want to do. Sometimes, most of the time actually, life is about what somebody else wants us to do. It’s about what our parents, friends, teachers, leaders want us to do. More importantly, it’s about what our Creator wants us to do. You know, the person who created you several years ago but planned out your existence before time began? You know that one; the one who has this perfect path marked for you, but sometimes you choose to go off on your own. I hope you know. You see, that one has a plan for you; a perfect plan. He is the one who knows where you should go when you are lost, and he wants to tell you. We just have difficulties listening. Ok, so this is some of the stuff that was going through my head this afternoon when the staff member asked me what my life vision was. Do you see my predicament? Not only do I have to think about what’s going to happen next week when I have to get to Austria and somehow find out where my place of living is, but I also have to think about what’s going to happen in 2 years when I graduate. And that’s only the beginning of the vision. Of course, there are things that have gone through my mind about my future. They are pictures of places and people that I think might be possibilities. But even then, I don’t know if they are my own pictures, or somebody else’s pictures. It’s a difficult process. While all of these difficult thoughts and ideas were floating around, people were waiting for an answer. I could see the look of anticipation of some great answer. You know, something like: “Well, I think that I’m going to someday live in a village of unreached people where I can start a school that teaches people basic things like hygiene and food preservation.” That’s a great vision, but I don’t know whom it belongs to. My vision is much foggier; kind of like the evenings I used to experience in the Presidio district of San Francisco on my way home to the Tenderloin. I would walk out of the apartment where I watched two little boys, and I would enter a cloud. We were on a hill, so we were actually in the cloud. It was a magnificent picture with so much fog. The word ‘magnificent’ is not what I think of when I think of that thick cloud fogging up my vision of my own future. The word is my like ‘frustrating’. I would love to someday wake up to find a peace of paper next to my bed telling me directions for my life for the next X years. Or maybe I wouldn’t? Ok, so back to the story. I was sitting there in my chair thinking, and they were waiting, so I answered what I knew. I answered, “I think that my life has a purpose that I don’t necessarily know yet. I think that I have been given gifts that were once talents, but now I can see that they can be used for a greater purpose than winning a contest or impressing somebody. As far as my future job looks, it could be anything, but I know it will involve one thing. That one thing is interaction. My future is filled with loving people. It’s filled with being loved and having the opportunity to show peoples the Love I receive daily.” That was all I could say. I know that sounds like an answer anybody could say, but I think that’s the point. Sometimes, I think that the stuff I write in this blog is crazy. I think that it is stuff I’m supposed to keep to myself because they are only thoughts that I receive through my experiences. I think a lot that it’s stupid to share because they are only words of an imperfect person; an imperfect person who happens to be lonely sometimes in a big castle. My words are just words, as I’ve said before. I am no different than you. I am only human, and anything that is good in my life is not actually mine. The bad things can belong to me, but the good things belong to somebody else. I think about that a lot. I’m discouraged about my writing a lot, but then I think about other things that encourage me. What if you are thinking the exact same thing as me someday? What if there is one of you reading this that has been having similar thoughts, but thought that you were crazy for thinking them. Or maybe you are just like me, just like a bunch of people with crazy thoughts. I think there are more people with these thoughts and other thoughts that flow through our brains. No matter what, we are not alone. We aren’t alone today in our minds, and we aren’t alone in our actions in our futures. That’s the whole point; your future is not just for yourself. You have a teammate, a partner. I have trouble remembering that. When I was asked that question today, I wanted to answer my own dreams that I’ve had. These are dreams of someday being a teacher living in a distant land. I will wait to give a full answer to the question until I find out for sure that those dreams are not only mine.

I hope that you don’t just read through my posts everyday to find out information about me. My life is exciting, sometimes, but other times it is very boring. Either way, I try to write things to help you think about your own lives. I think there is a communal sense among all humans that causes people to think about ideas like this one. Hopefully, you are thinking about crazy things too. Tell me about them. Any of them. Send me an email because I’d love to hear. My email is thomaspanicucci@gmail.com. I’m 35 minutes late on the girls floor tonight. Time for bed. Boa Noite.