“If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans”
Like any bright-eyed, recent college graduate, I have many plans to change the world. Growing up in a small agricultural community in the Central Valley of California, it never occurred to me that I didn’t have the power to change the things I didn’t like about the world. In college, I studied the many problems we face today and it only strengthened my conviction that I not only had the power to do something about it but that I was in fact obligated to act. My background and my faith begged the question: how could I not do something about it?
Many of my classmates and friends feel this way as well. We have had many conversations about our plans: how to get into medical school or law school; how to make a difference in people’s lives; how to give back to society in some meaningful and positive way. During our undergrad years, these were somewhat distant plans. As we slowly approached graduation, however, so did the time to begin acting upon them. Graduation meant it was “go” time.
One year out of college, I am one year into this phase of action. I have to be honest: it is harder than I thought it would be. I have very recently faced a significant change in the plans I had laid out for my post-college life and I am standing in the middle of what has to be one of the most significant crossroads of my life. I can almost literally go anywhere and do anything as soon as the Intern job ends. This is both exhilarating and a little frightening at the same time. Suddenly having to change my “5-year life plan” hit me harder than I thought it would and I had to ask myself why.
After thinking about it, I realized I was having trouble with the plans I had made for myself and the plans God might have for me. I have witnessed many of my classmates barrel through college and post-college plans with their life plan written in permanent marker on their day planners. Although their life plan may have made sense as a freshman in college, they have consciously or unconsciously not taken the time to sit down with it and re-think it. As Stanford students, we are used to having a set plan and following it to reach the desired goal. Sometimes, though, God sends us little (or big) hints to let us know that we might not be aiming for the right goal or that we have totally headed in the wrong direction.
Of course even recognizing these hints, let alone acting upon them, is hard. It was for me. I am used to independence when it comes to my academic and career paths. Plus, I am stubborn when it comes to things that are close to my heart. Because a life of meaning for me involves having a job that does more than just pay the bills, I decided a long time ago that I would work in areas that I have a personal connection to: immigration, inequality, justice for the poor and the disenfranchised. Somewhere along the way, however, I also became attached to a particular way of working in these areas: public policy and law. This set-back in my plans has made me stop and wonder if I need to take another look at this. Do the plans God has for me match up with the plans I have laid out for myself or am I sticking to these plans simply because I have not given enough thought to anything else? Am I not listening closely enough to God’s whisperings?
Ultimately, I think many of us are guilty of this but I also think it takes a lot of courage to realize you’re doing this and to do something about it. Spending a year as a Catholic Community Intern has given me enough of the courage I need to realize I need to step back and re-think what I’m doing and why. Although I am a strong believer in self-determination, I also believe we are significant parts of God’s larger plan for the world. We make our own choices every day but we should strive toward making those choices fall within the purpose God has for each of us.
Sometimes when we keep pushing and it doesn’t give, we may need to re-think what we’re pushing against and why. Even though it may be difficult and scary to think we’ve been headed in the wrong direction, it’s better to realize it today than 5 years from now. We need to have enough confidence in ourselves to know we’ll be all the better for it and we need to have enough faith, in both ourselves and the goodness of God’s plan for us, to be able to face the truth and deal with it.
Someone once told me that something is only worth it if you have to struggle for it. As we approach the end of the academic year and some of us face our “go” time, I hope we remember to stop and listen. Sometimes our dreams are harder to reach than we thought and sometimes we need to open our minds to new possibilities. It will always be hard but as long as we have faith, we’ll figure it out. I’m in the middle of it, I’ve got a long way to go but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Estella Cisneros
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