Abigail Moore
Bryan Reaume 
Moreau FYE
October 14, 2021


2
Moore

Might I Learn to Love in Truth

During my first months at Notre Dame and my experiences in the Moreau FYE course, I have reflected on who I already am, what I’m looking for in my time here, how Notre Dame can facilitate my search, and how this reflects the prospective telos I’m seeking. On coming to college here I recognize that I bring with me a specific, formed identity. I have been made slow for thoughtful reflection and better-informed action, stalwart for withstanding journeys to destinations beyond my current reach, and curious for seizing adventures when opportunity calls. These traits are a product of my life experience before Notre Dame, and they inform how I approach adapting to college life. “Slow” is derived from my family’s complaints that I am always lagging behind, from spending double the time on my homework in High School than any of my friends, from my eventually diagnosed “Neurodevelopmental Disorder.” At Notre Dame this part of my identity has manifested in the registering at the Sara Bea center and long hours studying alone in my dorm room, but it also offers me a deeper engagement with my new university courses and a careful perspective. I also bring a stubborn, stalwartness most recently exercised along the Pacific Crest Trail. In my first essay for my Writing and Rhetoric class, a narration of my experience on the trail led me to a more profound understanding of why I uplift and have uplifted resilience. While at Notre Dame and with the help of this assignment, I have processed how my thru-hike has impacted who I am. In Moreau FYE specifically, I surprised myself while writing my “Where I'm From” poem which caused me to reflect back on the defining themes in my childhood and recognize a pattern of adventure seeking and valuing spontaneity (George Ella Lyon - Moreau FYE Week 6). Even reading Father Sorin’s letter to Moreau I noticed how the mindset and values he brought with him to the Indiana made what could have been a harsh and dismal situation into an opportunity for hope and learning. I’d like to hope that I might gain some of Sorin’s wonder at this place and I’d be honored if what I bring to this institution plays any role in realizing his dream (“Fr. Sorin Letter to Bl. Basil Moreau, December 5, 1842,” Fr. Sorin, Moreau FYE – Week 5) . 
Building off of who I already am and what I can contribute to Notre Dame, I am also seeking to develop my person further while learning here. I want to refine an authentic, honest, and individual self and join a community that will cultivate and drive me. I am pursuing “a depth of character” as David Brooks discussed in “Should You Live for Your Resume or Your Eulogy?” in my education at Notre Dame (David Brooks – Moreau FYE Week 2). Any other college that I could have gone to would have challenged and strengthened my mind, but I doubt any of them would have tried to do the same for my heart. I am not so interested in strictly professional success or material wealth, but I am deeply concerned about living a life full of stories—one that will make me emotionally intricate and connected to the truth. It’s harder for me to picture what this looks like but I believe an education that confronts the mind and the heart will build me towards it.   
This growth that I desire must come from being challenged by my environment and those around me and by consistently engaging my goals and core beliefs with my actions. In order to be impacted by such a community, I have to begin by opening myself up to it. As a quieter member of the social network, this may be the part that need to mature the most. Although Brené Brown’s narrative of her own path to vulnerability kick-started my experience in freshman classes, I have not yet followed her example as I should (“The Power of Vulnerability,” Brené Brown – Moreau FYE Week 1). I know I am looking for a community that exalts the deserving, encourages the development of character, and maintains an openness to change, but I don’t quite know how to look. I was talking this week with Fr. Ollie from my hall, and he mentioned how his closest friends still today are those he made while an undergrad at Notre Dame. I think part of forging such long-lasting bonds begins with fostering a curiosity for the unique stories that my peers hold to expand my worldview. 
My sense of adventure, that I mentioned earlier, stems from desiring fuller more complex stories to understand foreign people and places, but I think I fall short of actively pursuing it on the person to person level or in the more monotonous daily life. I would hate to be satisfied with only single stories, like those Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about in “The Danger of a Single Story,” but I know in these first months of college I have not reach out enough to those around me to enrich my perceptions to extent others deserve (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Moreau FYE Week 7). Life-giving relationships can only be forged by actively acknowledging the human dignity we share and welcoming in each unique possibility of a person. I strongly believe this, but more often then not I keep to myself rather than beginning the such a significant process. Although I should be mindful not to end up in the relationships described in “5 Signs You're in a Toxic Friendship,” that mindfulness should not devolve into reservation that blocks me from founding friendships (Olivia T. Taylor – Moreau FYE Week 4). I cannot hope to achieve the matured heart and eulogy-worthy life if I avoid the relationships so crucial to both.
With all these things together, the identity and character I arrived with, my desire to improve that self through the heart, and a search for belonging in a community, I am faced with the question of where they will lead me. It might be alluded to in a quote by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ: “’living like the truth is true’” (“Student Reflections on Faith at Notre Dame,” Kyle, Moreau FYE – Week 3). I’m not completely sure, but I hope that my life can come to reflect that. If Notre Dame can aid me in not only learning to know and articulate the truth but to live it out, I think I will have attained some sliver of wisdom here. Even more so, I am aspiring to a condition of the heart and mind that falls continuously in love with the good, the true, and the beautiful and to strive after them in every corner of the earth from a habit made here at Notre Dame.