Year In Review
2023 - 2024
I always wondered what it would feel like to achieve your dreams. I've read a hundred Disney quotes, listened to motivational speeches, prayed for all my dreams to come true. But pursuing ballet meant waiting. Going to class and doing eight thousand plies and tendues a day, turning and crying because I fell from a turn and jumping and wondering when I would start jumping higher and waiting and waiting for the day I could finally be satisfied with my dancing. I am convinced now that achieving your dreams is not about being satisfied. I achieved one of my dreams this spring, performing a solo role as the Sea Witch (see left) in the College Conservatory of Music's production of the Little Mermaid. And yet I am still waiting. Waiting for the day I will feel fully satisfied, perfect as a dancer. I know that day will never come. And for that, I am grateful - grateful that achieving one dream doesn't leave me feeling that I have nothing more to gain. Grateful that I am ready to pursue greater dreams in dance with more vigor than ever. And most of all, grateful for this art form that reminds me every day how beautiful it feels for perseverance to win.
Happiness. I think about it a lot. I wonder if it is just a chemical in my brain. My biology book explains it that way. I am happy when I am with my family, or watching a good show, or eating ice cream. I am happy when I dance, when I work out, when I listen to music. I crave happiness and it worries me that it might be all fake. Just hormones and pleasure centers in my brain. But then I remember that I have experienced joy. And joy is not happiness. Joy is not the simple stimulation of the brain's pleasure center in response to a tasty treat or a Netflix binge. Joy is holding a little girl with cancer in your arms, watching her grin at you like she's just met a real princess, and telling you that you're her favorite. Joy is pinkie-promising to be her best friend and asking her to come visit you in Scotland where your royal family lives. The day I visited Ronald McDonald House, dressed as a princess, to visit the children staying there, was the best day of my life. And I do not say that lightly, because I have searched for true happiness for a long time. And that day was better. That day I found true joy. A Moment of Magic has been a life-changing organization in my time at the University of Cincinnati. I am now more certain than ever, that no matter what I do with my life, I must use it to serve. Because that is where I found real joy, untethered by the transcient symptoms of chemical-derived pleasure. That is where I found myself.
