Same, But Different
"Nevertheless, my life is in flux. Though it's going in the direction that it was meant to go, I just can't grasp how anything will ever be like it was not so long ago.”
I wrote that in a blog post the summer I turned 21. It was a momentous year: I was waiting for a mission call, I had felt reassured and found joy in pursuing my journalism degree, the singles ward was a fun and engaging place for me, etc. But even among those good things, it didn’t exempt me from the happenings of life. I felt discomfort in confronting the ambiguities before me, including worry about how my relationships would change as I left friends and family for two years. I was so anxious about exiting what might have been the prime of my life to never be able to reclaim it.
I look back at that person, now nine years younger than me, and I think, “You have no idea what’s in store.” My mission experience would be incredible, and I’d go on to finish my degree and love it. I came home from my mission and fell into the ranks of my ward where old friends and new accompanied me on exciting adventures. Additional surprising elements included a move to Mesa that has been nothing short of life-changing in the best ways. I would deepen existing relationships and meet new, wonderful people that I really care about. The “prime of my life” was reclaimed.
But I look back at that person and again think, “You have no idea what’s in store,” because to counterbalance the good, I’d face some serious hurt in the next phase of life that I wasn’t expecting. My mother got sick and died. I’ve navigated loneliness and otherness. Depression reared its ugly head and knocked me off kilter. Even now, at an age where I thought I would have a bit more stability and be a more even-keel person, I can feel discarded or unimportant to other people. Life is replete with challenges. Amid the beauty of life are also the thorns of human existence, and no one is exempt from what can be found on both ends of that spectrum.
I feel a little bit of whiplash as I read that blog post. Revisiting that phase of my life is striking because I now see how many of my worries were unfounded. All of the things I stressed over were sorted out, often to a better resolution than I had even hoped. And yet, the universal nature of those worries stands out really clearly as well. It turns out that despite my best efforts, I am the same Zac as that young man. Sure, I’m different in many substantive ways (including maturity, capacity for compassion, and interest in the world). But just because I see how things typically worked out really beautifully at that time hasn't put to rest all the fear of the “flux” that I’m encountering today. I could write those same sentences from that post now and mean every word of them. The context is different, and what I actually fear isn’t identical, but the place they stem from is the same.
I’m grateful to encounter those thoughts from my 20-year-old self, though. Laced through them is naïvety I’m almost embarrassed by. Fortunately, the beauty of age is hindsight (and I peaked in my mid-20s, so there was some beauty in that element of age too), and I’m so grateful to see how that stress and worry were resolved. By and large, the things I thought would end the world never really ended my world. I rolled with the punches and kept my head up. Things panned out.
As I consider the next phase of my life now, rife with professional pursuits, seeking companionship, and navigating a world that is more gray than black and white, I’m really not sure what I’m expecting or what I even want. But I take heart in giving my younger self credit; 20-year-old me faced the unknown, trusted in myself and God, and hoped that the universe would do me right. By all accounts, the unknown turned out to be a good proving ground, God never left me stranded, and the universe dealt me more winning hands than losing ones. If those same tendencies to dread change and fret about uncertainties exist in me now, it also means that my capacity for resilience is there, imbedded in the fabric of my identity just like it was when I was younger. If I could stare down the “flux” that I so dreaded, it means I can do it again.
I wouldn’t trade most of the last nine years, because it would mean changing some pivotal parts of who I have become. So here’s to the next nine, and seeing what I can make of this big, unpredictable life.
I wrote that in a blog post the summer I turned 21. It was a momentous year: I was waiting for a mission call, I had felt reassured and found joy in pursuing my journalism degree, the singles ward was a fun and engaging place for me, etc. But even among those good things, it didn’t exempt me from the happenings of life. I felt discomfort in confronting the ambiguities before me, including worry about how my relationships would change as I left friends and family for two years. I was so anxious about exiting what might have been the prime of my life to never be able to reclaim it.
But I look back at that person and again think, “You have no idea what’s in store,” because to counterbalance the good, I’d face some serious hurt in the next phase of life that I wasn’t expecting. My mother got sick and died. I’ve navigated loneliness and otherness. Depression reared its ugly head and knocked me off kilter. Even now, at an age where I thought I would have a bit more stability and be a more even-keel person, I can feel discarded or unimportant to other people. Life is replete with challenges. Amid the beauty of life are also the thorns of human existence, and no one is exempt from what can be found on both ends of that spectrum.
I feel a little bit of whiplash as I read that blog post. Revisiting that phase of my life is striking because I now see how many of my worries were unfounded. All of the things I stressed over were sorted out, often to a better resolution than I had even hoped. And yet, the universal nature of those worries stands out really clearly as well. It turns out that despite my best efforts, I am the same Zac as that young man. Sure, I’m different in many substantive ways (including maturity, capacity for compassion, and interest in the world). But just because I see how things typically worked out really beautifully at that time hasn't put to rest all the fear of the “flux” that I’m encountering today. I could write those same sentences from that post now and mean every word of them. The context is different, and what I actually fear isn’t identical, but the place they stem from is the same.
I’m grateful to encounter those thoughts from my 20-year-old self, though. Laced through them is naïvety I’m almost embarrassed by. Fortunately, the beauty of age is hindsight (and I peaked in my mid-20s, so there was some beauty in that element of age too), and I’m so grateful to see how that stress and worry were resolved. By and large, the things I thought would end the world never really ended my world. I rolled with the punches and kept my head up. Things panned out.
As I consider the next phase of my life now, rife with professional pursuits, seeking companionship, and navigating a world that is more gray than black and white, I’m really not sure what I’m expecting or what I even want. But I take heart in giving my younger self credit; 20-year-old me faced the unknown, trusted in myself and God, and hoped that the universe would do me right. By all accounts, the unknown turned out to be a good proving ground, God never left me stranded, and the universe dealt me more winning hands than losing ones. If those same tendencies to dread change and fret about uncertainties exist in me now, it also means that my capacity for resilience is there, imbedded in the fabric of my identity just like it was when I was younger. If I could stare down the “flux” that I so dreaded, it means I can do it again.
I wouldn’t trade most of the last nine years, because it would mean changing some pivotal parts of who I have become. So here’s to the next nine, and seeing what I can make of this big, unpredictable life.
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