My Calling
What is life but an adventure? A journey, that with each new experience becomes evermore exciting. A journey that with each low and subsequent high brings us closer to finding who we are, and our place in the web of adventures happening around us.
I find that life is full of secrets, awaiting discovery. The more we experience, the more secrets unveil themselves to us. With each new secret uncovered comes a greater appreciation for life. One of the most important secre
ts of life that we discover the first time we lose our parent in the grocery store is that the most valuable parts of our lives are the people around us and the relationships we have with them.
I’ve clung onto this secret as a truth of life that directs my aspirations. Establishing relationships and connecting with others has become the base for which everything else in my life stems from.
I have been extremely lucky to be exposed to many different parts of the world. While every place I visited had its own wonderfully unique c
ulture, there was a constant element I recognized in each setting. No matter the location (Mexico, Italy, Guatemala, Sweden, etc.) I felt a sense of unity with others despite our differences. We were all human.
A defining characteristic of humans is that we need each other. There is a mutual reliance among human beings, for we know that without others the scope of what can be accomplished is much smaller.
I have come to understand that humans, by nature, are powerful. This power multiplies itself when we work together.
My education has taught me that this power can be used in destructive ways as well. The earth we live in today is plagued by abuse of power as ISIS continues to murder innocent civilians, North Korea builds nuclear weapons, and the United States and China do little to combat extreme environmental conditions that they have created.
This is what my calling stems from. An admiration of the radiant light that we as humans have the ability to spread. I believe this light is so powerful that it can ultimately overcome the darkness and evil that has pushed our earth into a dire state.
Where it all started
Growing up my parents preached the beauty and value of human life constantly, along with the importance of helping and serving others who had less than us. We went on a few service trips to Mexico during my childhood (including one to Juarez, the murder capital of the world at the time) which were great experiences for me, but lacked substance. The impacts we were making in these communities were rewarding, but temporary and hollow.
During my first quarter at Santa Clara University, I was introduced to the idea of an immersion trip. I’ve been on two of these so far. Instead of blindly attempting to fix a community’s problems, these trips were focused on learning about a group of people, their culture, and the societal injustices looming in their everyday lives. With this knowledge, we had the tools to do more than provide a bandaid for the suffering that these people were experiencing.
But immersion trips only introduced me to the first step of change: understanding. I became eager to use my personal skills and talents to build upon my understanding of problems facing the world. Sitting in my apartment room during my semester abroad in Lund, Sweden, I felt called to act on my aspirations. A little research led me to discover the Miller Center’s Global Social Benefit Fellows program.
At first I was hesitant to pursue the opportunity, unsure of h
ow prepared I would be for the drastic culture shock that locations in Africa and Asia would confront me with. But then I spent some
time evaluating my journey to that point: where I had been, where I currently was, and
the direction I wanted to go. Immediately my uncertainty was gone.
Development
It all started with sports. Sports was where I learned growth and improvement. It was where I learned to communica
te and to work in a team. Most of all, sports was where I learned that confidence is the key to success.
Reading the sports section of the newspaper with my bowl of cereal every morning was a nessecity. Tossing a baseball to myself, dribbling my basketball through imaginary defenders, and juggling my soccer ball were what made me happy as a kid. As I grew older, I found that writing about sports also made me happy. Sports were what made me tick.
Sports were the commonality I used to connect with pe
ople in my own communities and ones I was visiting. Some of my fondest memories are from a dirt field in Ensenada, Mexico where I spent hours on end playing soccer with local kids. The summer after my first year in college I directed and coached sports camps in my hometown.
When entering college, my career vision was to enter the sports media industry. I had written about sports for my high school’s newspaper and picked up blogging about sports as a side hobby. I was well versed in everything sports, and although the field was competitive I was motivated to carve out a spot for myself in it.
I took on a role as the Assistant Editor and Producer of a news program at Santa Clara University my second year in school, and used that experience coupled with a class in digital filmmaking to score what I thought would be the job of my dreams at the bay area’s local sports station, CSN Bay Area. I truly enjoyed my time there and took away a handful of valuable experiences and skills from it, but also realized that my calling was somewhere else. I wanted to go out into the world and make a difference.
I put my love of sports to the side, and focused on a new passion that was growing in me to use the skills I had developed thanks to my love of sports to make positive change in the world. I’m still figuring out exactly how I want to do this, but I see the fellowship as an extraordinary opportunity in bringing more clarity to how my vocation and passion for a better world intersect.
I do know this. No matter what I am doing, I want to be fighting for the beauty of human life and the beauty of this world from which life comes. I want to be a source of light in these times when light can sometimes be hard to see.