But Who Do You Say I Am?

As I sit here in Macdonalds (Macca’s, as the locals call it) watching skinny beautiful people in shorty shorts walk by, having just finished my batch of three Subway cookies dipped in my 30 cent ice cream cone, I have to wonder about the big questions in life. Perhaps The big question:

This should be a picture of the cookies and ice cream, but
I was way too busy eating them to take a picture. Here
instead is my peanut butter and nutella sandwich. Glory.

Was I created to be a dessert genius?

Or was it the nurturing education of my ingenious dessert-wise father that trained me in this mysterious and ancient way, the way of the Raspberry Cheesecake cookie dipped in sweet, sweet vanilla ice cream? Was it evolution-manipulated genetics that provided my metabolism that works at a high enough rate that I’m able to taste-test dozens of peanut butter/cookie combos in one sitting? Or is it the hand of God that designed it so in conjunction with my work ethic that gives me the strength to walk from pantry to freezer to couch and occasionally drive out to Dairy Queen?

I am indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.

I’m also in Canberra! (or I was, at the now somewhat dated time of writing this). In Canberra where the buses are infrequent, the flies are copious, the winds are nefarious, and the Subway workers are cute boys so susceptible to my charms they’re liable to give me cookies for free.[1] My troubles here began when the city bus terminal did not, as the website said, have lockers for large backpacks. They continued when the 3:45 bus blew right past my stop, leaving me waiting an hour for the next, effectively decreasing my chances of making it to the war memorial before closing to about 0.

Travel is a reflective crucible.

Maybe I'm wrong, but if I'm right and this is a sculpture of
nuzzling kangaroos, it gives me warm fuzzies.

Try it sometime, if you want to find out what you were created to be. Go traveling—and figure out what brings you joy in the midst of stress, because I’m pretty sure that is how you figure it out (the whole adolescent “who am I” thing anyway). Travel is, somehow, both sides of the coin: stressful and joyful. It heats you up, exposing all your little cracks—for me, workaholism, discomfort with spending money, hubris of map-reading abilities, a paradoxically tendency toward relational loner-ism[2]—and forces you to deal with them.

Or perhaps that’s only my introspective bent forcing me to find meaning in all the mishaps of the world. I have been reading David Keiersey’s book that picks apart the Meyers-Brigg personality test and if that doesn’t make you think about the whole “Who am I[3]” thing I don’t know what will. Though brevity is rarely my strong suit, I have a simple answer for that eternal question—simple enough to sum up a blog post. Simple enough, even, to fit into a shortened haiku, of the 3-7-3 variety:

Who am I?

I am a dessert genius.

Yum. Yum. Yum.

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[1] Er, actually it might have had more to do with him having to get rid of them before the end of the day. It’s all in your perspective!

[2] I wish there were a footnote explaining this too. Made you look!

[3] 2-4-6-0-oooooooooooooone!