Gottemoller Professor Whittington Moreau FYE- 64 15 October 2021 Finding Meaning: A First-Year Reflection I believe that I am searching for something or someone that will make my life meaningful. I believe that I forge life-giving relationships by being completely vulnerable with others. I believe that I improve myself by identifying my weaknesses and working to eliminate them. I believe that I form healthy relationships by creating boundaries. I believe that my community should be loving, encouraging, and nourishing. I believe that I grow by understanding and embracing where I come from. I believe that I pursue truth by letting others tell their stories. At the heart of my Notre Dame journey has been a desire to find meaning. When I look around me on campus, I find that I am surrounded by people who have found meaning in their major, clubs, career, or religion. As a Catholic institution, Notre Dame finds meaning in the bond of faith and love which stems from this identity. It is this faith that at one time put Notre Dame on the bottom of my college list, but I now realise that without my faith, life is bleak and meaningless. Before coming to Notre Dame, my faith could easily have been described as a “religious duty” to be dispatched on a Sunday morning; some place disconnected from our daily life.” (“Faith Brings Light to a Dark World” by David Fagerberg- Moreau FYE Week Three) During my first week on campus, I found myself choosing to attend a weekly mass and enjoying it. During the last few weeks, I have enjoyed attending different masses and engaging with the community of Catholic students on campus. I have discovered that my faith has always guided me and given my life meaning and that it continues to do so. Through the help of the Catholic community here, I can confidently say that I have found something that gives my life meaning. Being vulnerable has always been very difficult for me because it involves trusting that another person will acknowledge and respect your vulnerability. Allowing someone to witness my weaknesses and knowing that they will not judge me for them seems completely impossible, but I know that the only way to forge authentic life-giving relationships is to be vulnerable. If one sentence captures my approach to vulnerability it would be this: “I’m going to totally deconstruct shame. I’m going to understand how vulnerability works and I’m going to outsmart it.” (“The Power of Vulnerability” by Dr. Brene Brown- Moreau FYE Week One) I now know that deconstructing shame and completely understanding vulnerability is impossible, but somehow I must learn how to enact Dr. Brown’s wisdom in my life. Self-improvement and introspection are difficult tasks for me, but at certain times in my life I have been forced to do a lot of both. College has been one of those times. My process of introspection is described perfectly by David Brooks as this: “You find your signature sin, out of which your other sins emerge and you fight that sin and you wrestle with that sin.” (“Should You Live for Your Resume or Your Eulogy?” by David Brooks- Moreau FYE Week Two) This process- though long and painful- has guided me through some of my most difficult situations and I trust that it will be a useful tool as I approach complex relationships throughout my college journey. During my brief experience of college, I have found myself saying things such as “Because I Love You, Tonight is Awesome!” (“Because I Love You - Whiskey” by JoinOneLove- Moreau FYE Week Four) Statements like these come easily to me because I don’t like confrontations and I prefer doing something that I don’t want to do than to “cause a scene.” Creating priorities on campus and deciding what activities I have the physical, mental, and social stamina for has been difficult at times. Learning to kindly tell a friend that I can’t hang out because I have homework has challenged me, but by creating simple boundaries such as this, I hope to prepare myself to stand my ground in more difficult situations. Fr. Sorin provides the best example of a loving, encouraging, and nurturing community throughout his correspondence with Fr. Moreau. In one letter, he exclaims, “Oh! May the Lord multiply you and make you abound in charity towards one another and towards all men, as we do also towards you.”(“Sorin Letter to Moreau” by Fr. Sorin- Moreau FYE Week Five) By following the example of Fr. Sorin and employing the gift of Christian charity, I believe that I can build a community which is nourishing to all its members. “I am from those moments- snapped before I budded - leaf-fall from the family tree.” (“Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon- Moreau FYE Week Six) Much like Gerge Lyon, I too take pride in my family and identify myself with them and the memories I have created with them. That being said, I have now found that for the first time, I have the ability to do whatever I want and more importantly be whoever I want. The enormity of this change was initially completely overwhelming, but as I have had time to adjust to being independent, I have learned to embrace who I am as an individual outside of my family's identity. I have always taken pride in being someone who shakes people’s biases and expectations. Whether it is the way I dress, speak, or act, I am intimately familiar with the feeling of exposing the single stories of others. That being said, I am still surprised when others manage to shake my expectations and biases and this campus has given me opportunities to witness that several times. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie notes that biases are created when you “show a people as one thing over and over again and that is what they become.” (“The Danger of a Single Story” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie- Moreau FYE Week Seven) My eagerness to tell my story and be heard has sometimes silenced the stories of others, but I know that to pursue truth, I need to let others tell me their story.