Earlier this afternoon I was absent-mindedly flipping through Facebook, as I am wont to do on lazy spring Sunday afternoons, and I saw a set of photos someone had posted of the beautiful planter garden that they had put together on their Washington DC terrace apartment with their impossibly handsome fiance. I flopped over on my borrowed bed and buried my face my borrowed duvet cover and let out a Tina Belcher-esque moan: he’s successful; I’m not.
Facebook has become something of a source of frustration for me in the last couple of weeks because it reminds me of the manifold ways in which my life has taken a different direction than many of those in my peer group. That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is something that an increasing number of twenty-somethings are experiencing. I’m not sure where I expected to be as I approached my twenty-sixth birthday, but four months to the day away from it I’m fairly positive that living with my parents and scraping by with my overnight non-profit job and sleeping on a borrowed mattress was not it.
It used to be that I had dreams–plans, ambitions even. It’s not that I don’t have those dreams anymore, because I certainly do, and I still have a vocation and a path that I’m walking. But they’re vastly different from the dreams of the wide- and wild-eyed teenager who left home at seventeen years old to become a composer. For the first time–this is a big deal–I don’t feel like I’m running from anything (that’s an entire post on its own).

But having this trajectory is not an antidote to those feelings of, “could I have done better in a STEM field? Could I have done better if I had stayed and finished out my PhD? Could I have done better if I had made different decisions about my life?”
The answer to those questions, I think, isn’t a yes or a no. I could have done differently if I had gone to this school or taken that degree or done that internship–but ultimately living in the realm of possibilities and regrets is not going to help me find the satiety that I need in this present moment. Part and parcel of my current vocation is to be both mindful and thankful of the place I am in right now. Those things I find myself envious of are often things that I know would be toxic to my own vocation and identity. And so the cognitive distortion of he’s successful, I’m not, remains just that: a cognitive distortion, not grounded in reality at all.
And so my answer to those questions of, “could I be the one with a handsome fiance and a kickass apartment in Washington DC and a six-figure salary if I had just done things differently?” is “yes, at the cost of who I am in this moment.” I am not that person. And I accept the fact that I am envious of them. It’s okay.
Because I’m not that person, and I have a life unto which I’ve been called to live. And it’s a good life, successful even, because I have a roof over my head and food on my table, which is more than an uncomfortably large number of people have. Moreover I have a job, and a career trajectory, and the support of a loving network of family and friends across the country and the world who are holding me up and walking with me into my calling. The person that I am in this moment is precisely the person whom God needs me to be. And to live into the calling of God is success in its own right, not on the terms of Facebook.
(Even though I’d be able to throw some awesome dance parties on a terrace like that.)