My life has been characterized by a series of micro-leaps that have built on each other surrounding the common theme of seeking purpose. I’d almost call it ironic that these micro-leaps have all followed the same idea of choosing discomfort, challenge, and individuality considering both that I have repeatedly planned out a normal life for myself throughout growing up and that my family and friends drive the person that I am.

I’m the oldest of three boys in my parents’—Matt and Kathy Hickman—extremely competitive, close knit family. Both of my parents come from sibling-filled families of their own, making for expansive extended family gatherings and influencers, but nothing has ever matched the comfort, camaraderie, and rapport that surrounds the five of us when circled around a dinner table or crammed into a car for a road trip. With these fantastic people, I was engaged at a young age in travel and thirst for the outdoors, whether that be constant hikes through the forests in my home state of Oregon, exploring the waters in the Great Barrier Reef, or attempting to surf in Costa Rica.

I call my journey toward this fellowship a series of micro-leaps because through the process of pursuing and accepting the fellowship, it became clear that the journey has been a path of stepping stones that has been in progress for a long time. Only a few times have I been faced with a challenging decision that I have seen as life-altering, and each time that decision has pushed me toward the more uncomfortable, challenging road. I chose the term micro-leap because while I was leaping out of my comfort zone, I wasn’t doing it alone. While my dad has always been my role model, my mom has always been my guide through these decisions. Despite boasting personalities that tend to clash, I always turn to deep discussions with my mom when confronting decisions. Most of the time her opinion frustrates me, as she has, and will, always push me toward challenges. Somehow she is able to see the road that is set in front of me before I can.

I identified two clear micro-leaps prior to this fellowship that pushed me toward discomfort and purpose this past winter when in reflection over where my early career should take me. The first micro-leap was choosing to attend the private, Jesuit high school in Portland rather than the smaller high school with my middle school friends. Always an indecisive person on even the small things in life, choosing something that would without a doubt push my life in another direction took months of internal battles, but also gave me the first experience of this purposeful calling. It wasn’t that I couldn’t make up my mind, but rather the difficulty came with that I had to let go of the comfortable normal that I had built. The moment I toured the school and met the students and teachers, I could feel that I could never look away from the challenge and growth that a school with six times the students and a Jesuit influence could offer.

The second was, in a similar vein, choosing to attend Santa Clara University. After the applications and campus tours were over and I was staring down yet another clearly life-altering decision; I turned to my comfort zone. The University of Oregon offered four more years going to school with some of my best friends, staying close to home, and a clear life path. As I came to decide on attending the university, I felt uneasy and double-checked my thought process with, of course, my mom. She knew I wanted to attend Oregon and hesitated, but convinced me, to my frustration, to visit Santa Clara with her one last time and let on that she felt that it was where I was meant to be. Upon meeting students and seeing the same themes I had come to love from my high school, I saddened as I knew, once again, I’d have to give up what I built in pursuit of something stronger.

These micro-leaps have prefaced life stages, which is why I find the fellowship to be the third in the series. The first was my move onto secondary schooling, the second into college, and the third toward a career. The first two decisions have been laced with rich development. At Jesuit High School I found a spiritual identity through religious experiences and taking leadership roles during retreats, I experienced loss and found the safety net that deep relationships provide, and I began to piece together my view of injustice in the world through intense social justice teachers and working with the marginalized communities both in the country and with an NGO in Nicaragua.

At Santa Clara I found my people, developed myself academically, and been exposed to more experiences that drove contemplation and changed my view of the world than I can count. In the pursuit of the Jesuit ideals that I experienced in high school, I was given the opportunity to consult for a taqueria in an impoverished, local area over a twenty week period. This reignited my hunger for a greater purpose and led me to studying abroad in Bologna, Italy through a social justice program this past fall. For the orientation, I spent ten days in Sicily working with and living with migrants around my age from North Africa. This was a sudden catalyst that began four months of a perspective shift that will continue to shape my life. The view of myself in the world quickly shrank, and suddenly I understood what an incredibly powerful privilege I was given for no reason past pure, dumb luck. As the trip concluded and everyone in my group reflected on how interesting it was to meet these migrants, an anger built up inside me. I realized this was just another immersion trip to serve our own experiences and view of the world as many of my peers, despite the opportunity to first hand experience the injustice, weren’t seeing the call to action. From then on, I spent days breaking down my planned life filled with financial sector jobs, easy monetary success, and simple retirement through canceling interviews, changing my major and minor, and reorienting the priorities of my career search.

This is when I found the Miller Center and its fellowship offering. Suddenly the micro-leaps that had led me to this point seemed incredibly pointed.  The past micro-leaps had been grounded in my mom’s advice to surround myself with the right people in order to find happiness, so I was nervous to meet the people connected to the center which would confirm or deny the calling I felt. My first contact was during the first stage of the selection process via a one-on-one screening with a past fellow. I remember feeling my breath quicken and the urge to crack my knuckles surge as the nerves set in and conversation started. In one moment, my tension was released as a line from the past fellow grabbed me: “Living a normal, even successful, life is easy, but boring. There has to be something bigger to pursue and serve.” I exhaled; these were the people I needed to leap toward next.

Before accepting the fellowship as my third micro-leap (and stop me if you heard this before) I called my guide of a mother. Again, I felt the familiar feeling I had felt only few, notable moments in my life come over me, so I sighed. I knew the drill: the sigh was of disappoint as my image of interning at a notable corporation and spending one last summer with my high school friends dissipated, and then a warm excitement that grew as I articulated my understanding to my mom. The understanding was that maybe everything has been building to something big; bigger than comfortable employment and time with friends.

For the first time in a long time we revisited why I went to Jesuit High School and why I was attending Santa Clara. I only then understood that these seemingly separate decisions were all the same, forcing me to jump into a challenging unknown to chase my life’s purpose and look toward an unordinary life that I cannot plan—no matter how hard and often I try. The anger I had experienced in Sicily was a flashing warning in my head that I wouldn’t be able to escape the need to pursue change; it was time to take the next leap in a larger climb.