Advice

If there are two things that people in my church back home know about me, it's that I don't wear shoes on holy ground and that I do something with space. (Which, when you think about it, isn't the worst thing. That could be my epitaph and I wouldn't be too upset over it.) So when a girl who's interested in becoming an astrophysicist started going to my church on Sunday, they sent her straight over to my mother who gave her my email. Then the kid did the exact right thing-- she actually emailed me.

Now, I'm already impressed with her just by the fact that she made good on an opportunity, so I spent maybe forty-five minutes writing her an email back that was packed with class suggestions and book suggestions and college suggestions and the occasional life-tip. I might make that into a post one day, but just in saying that sentence, I'm confronted by how weird this situation is.

Someone just asked me for advice.

Me.

And she said, multiple times, that she thought my life was really cool.

(To be fair, I have spent my evening playing covers of Rodgers and Hammerstein songs on my ukulele while drinking white wine, reading chapters of Frankenstein, and discussing the theological implications of the mortality rate of red-shirts on Star Trek, so I'm not at all unhappy with how things turned out. And I did move to this magical foreign country where everyone sounds so fantastic and transactions take place by exchanging actual golden coins, so my life is genuinely "pretty cool", as the kids say.)

But it's weird for me to be on the other side of this advice interaction. I was okay with it when I was at the planetarium- we'd get all sorts of requests for help on projects and I'd be happy to weigh in or send along resources as part of my job. I felt like I was building something then. The title gave me legitimacy and I could, with the privilege of that legitimacy, walk that back from time to time and say that I'm no expert in the field, but this is what I've found that could be helpful.

I wanted to say that here, in this email instance. I'm no expert in the field of life, but this is what I've found. And, judging by the length of that email, I have apparently found plenty.

It's odd to see yourself through someone else's eyes. She said, and I quote, "I find what you've done with your life really cool." And I know it's a teenager who's never met me who's saying this, but there's this fantastic affirmation here, right? There's this moment of Holy Mother of God, there is a human in the process of becoming who she is going to be who has reached out to me for any help I can send her way. I feel an obligation to share the knowledge that wasn't shared with me. I want to walk her slowly into academia and say, This is how this game is played, but you can discover such wonderful things if you do it right. I want to build her into the person that I, through experience and misjudgment, decided not to be. I can be that mentor. She's handed me that power.

It almost feels dishonest. That email was full of such enthusiasm, such encouragement. I feel like I should be warning her as well- in the middle of your studies, they could take away your major. You might feel like there's a purpose in your life, but I need to explain to you how complicated that idea is. You will fight the battle between experiencing all that life has to offer and achieving a dream and I cannot tell you which you should pick on any given Thursday night. Sometimes it's both. Oh, honey, there is so much you have to learn, so much becoming that is in front of you, I don't even know what to tell you, where to aim you, what to suggest. Yesterday, I mailed postcards, bought fabric to sew into curtains and a pair sweatpants because I left mine in the States over Christmas, made small-talk with the guy behind the register, and chose to go to the library when I could have stayed at home in bed, and I consider that to be a phenomenal day. How do I tell her that it's okay if that's where she ends up one day too, as long as she's trying? How do I tell her to say yes to relationships in high school because it'll make it easier to ask for relationships when high school is a deteriorating memory? How do I encourage her to be and to be brilliant?

I can affirm my existence every day. I know the narrative wherein I am living my dreams and I am new to the budding hope that my dreams may have led to something bigger than I could have hoped for. I am smart and beautiful and capable and everything that an eight-year-old version of me could have hoped for, sans working lightsaber. But I'm also not that. I'm human. We all are. And finding that balance is the mark of maturity, I think. 

"I find what you've done with your life really cool."

Well, damn, kid, I do too. But I also don't. 

Welcome to adulthood.