Allow me to re-introduce myself ("smile all the way in your liver" - Eat Pray Love)

Today's preface: if I wasn't before, I certainly am a woman now. And for that, I am smiling, deeply, all the way in my liver.

I have embarked on so many new adventures and experiences this year, most recently the nearly unparalleled experience of living remotely in southeast Asia for an equally raucous and gratifying summer. This has been a process of self-discovery often disguised as self-annihilation; a journey through which I've found myself both learning and reaffirming various components of my worldview. In the past month, through facing my own personal demons head on, by listening to the often unimaginable and shattering stories of the people around me, and by absorbing the richness of a culture that is so deliciously far away from my own, I've come away with so much.

Just before I departed on my jungle venture, my mom accused me of running from something. With all my erratic, danger-seeking, non-committal behavior these past few months, I know I’ve caused my parents a great deal of worry. And I definitely agree that I’ve been running… but not away. I’ve been so desperate to “find myself” that I’ve run in every direction possible. This has manifested in the ultimate battle of wills: me against myself. What it’s sadly taken me so long to realize is that there is no winner in this war; either way, I lose. I spent so much time searching for the person I want to be that I never took time to just enjoy being the person I am. And although I know old habits die hard (and thus I won’t change overnight), this was a huge revelation and I like to believe I’ll be a much more fulfilled woman as a result.

There is a Balinese meditation called "four brothers," which is the belief that we are all born with four brothers, intelligence, strength, friendship, and poetry, who guide us through life. While this practice is unique to the tiny Indonesian utopia, the broader concepts of guardian angels and similarly atoned protective spirits are found in every society throughout the world.

The four brothers meditation, however, is particularly special because it provides us a peaceful acceptance of the terms of our lives. By consenting to this truth, we allow ourselves to be free to live a life, precarious as she may be, of both fate and free will.

Discovering the four brothers philosophy has reaffirmed my belief in the important balance between confidence and curiosity; of knowing when to take charge and when to have faith. Not everything can be controlled, but some things must be harvested. The beauty (and the ugly, depending on how you look at it) of life is that sometimes it's up to you, and sometimes it's up to God. Deciphering which rule applies when is the troublesome business.

As a result of this spiritual epiphany, I've learned that the most valuable virtues I must strive for in this lifetime are patience, courage and prayer. Through the attainment of patience, I am releasing anxiety and achieving Zen. In finding my courage, I am learning to live and love life for the moment I am in; the beauty of which allows me to let go of the past and stop panicking about the future. And through prayer, I have found a benevolent, remarkable and deeply personal relationship with God, providing so generously to me an opportunity to make sense of my place in my head, my heart and the world.

I recognize that these virtues are of particular importance, for me, in love. I admit without hesitation that today my heart remains locked tightly in a bitter contest of wills with itself: impatient and terrified and closed-off. But I know that in order to reach the plateau of faith in love that I so desperately desire, I must be patient in knowing that love in my life will be when it's meant to be, and not a moment sooner; I must be fearless in allowing myself to move on when necessary, but also love valiantly and forcefully when necessary; and I must be open to the value of prayer in the process of finding and maintaining love, because without the mind-soul-body balance achievable only through prayer, I will surely never feel enough external balance to recognize, maintain, nor appreciate love when it comes to me.

I’ve grown a great deal in my understanding (acceptance?) of the world. My entire life I've struggled with the karmic concept of fairness. How unfair, that a girl born in rural Laos has no opportunity to see the world beyond her village, while a western man born to money in the US, is granted the luxury to see all of it. How unfair, that a Saudi Arabian woman has no chance to make her own decisions, but a French woman can move about as she pleases. How unfair, that royal bloodlines denote prestige without work, when peasantry demands so much labor without any real compensation.

In this regard I've learned there's no such thing as fairness. There are only existences and circumstances, some of which are lovelier than others (and loveliness is really quite contextual). But what has come most importantly of this revelation is that within this paradox is an international acceptance of the sacredness of beauty, something that is found in and unified by happiness.

I've learned that happiness, once thought to be measured by an arbitrary combination of luck and destiny, is in actuality a tangible calculation of it's pursuit; humanity doesn't merely achieve happiness, nor is it automatically bestowed upon certain peoples. Rather, anyone, anywhere in the world can theoretically and literally secure bliss through understanding the delicate dance between engagement and complacency. We all need to learn to thread that needle of striving for more but being happy with what we already have. And at the end of the day one of the truly miraculous things about life is humanity’s ability to find happiness proportionate to what’s available to us. It almost seems like the less we have, the easier it is to discover and sustain real joy.

I’ll end on this: although much has been learned, much remains unanswered, underdeveloped. I still struggle with tempering my demands for urgency, everywhere, at all times. Great fear continues to grip my heart from time to time. I remain cynical about the prophecy of real, lasting love, and struggle with consistent, effective prayer. My mind still races with discontentment at the endless cycles of social and economic imbalance that exists in this world. Even amidst so much beauty, I sometimes find reasons to be sad… After all, a summer is a deliriously short period of time to have perfected the many things I've learned. But perhaps this is the greatest and most easily attainable lesson of them all: I am not perfect, likely never will be, and must accept and admire that fact.

For isn’t it imperfection that makes life beautiful and valuable? Perfection denotes immortality, which we will never, ever achieve. But who would ever desire immortality? Mortality is what gives life meaning.

So it's okay to cry until your face runs out of tears, or to laugh until your face muscles yearns for relief. The gamut of emotions that we experience are what embellish and celebrate our imperfections, our mortality... our meaningfulness.