What's Your Personal Legend?

Inspired by Natasha Bedingfield's Unwritten, I created the byline for this blog "this is your life...it is unwritten until today".

The lyrics struck me: "Today is where your book begins, the rest is still unwritten". I have always thought of myself as a person who could forge to the "next level" of life...taking risks, albeit with fear, to enlarge myself. Yes, I have taken myself from one place to another in hopes that as I moved forward I would gain access to the truth of what makes Fatima, Fatima.

Yet, with each new adventure, or risk, I found myself becoming quieter, more reserved, damaged. The experience of change has never been one that I have welcomed - unless it was entirely rooted in my ambitions. But when change came, because someone changed their mind, or a circumstance was out of my control, suddenly I froze. The paralysis hit like a lightening bolt and left me singed with remorse, sadness, and fear. I rebound, go forward, in hopes of making what seemed to be another loss into a gain. I am resilient, to say the least, but am I courageous?

After reading Paulo Coehlo's The Alchemist for the third time this past weekend it struck me differently. A constant theme throughout the novel is that each of us has a Personal Legend. A Personal Legend is described as "what you've always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is (21)".

For many years, perhaps even up until the moments that I started to write this blog, I believed that my Personal Legend was to get married and have children. This isn't just a manifestation outdated brainwashing, it was a deep desire for family; a group of people who would give and receive love openly who were conceived by me and connected through me. I wanted to enjoy the excitement of an engagement, the pangs of childbirth, the anxiety of choosing a place to settle, the passions of marriage, the pride of watching loving, responsible babies turn into adults with integrity, joy, and peace at the center of their being. I have, in all honesty, had this vision for myself since as early as 8 years old.

Then, life happened. I chose the wrong guys, my health waned early in my twenties, doctors, teachers, family, and everyone else suggested I think of "other" things to do with my life because having a family just isn't simple or right or safe or something you can plan.

My faith has been challenged by clergy when I requested prayer for God to send me a husband. I was instructed to "be still" and "wait on the Lord" that my dreams would be manifested. When I became weary, year after year, of no results, my faith suffered because I believed the God they described didn't just want me to wait - He wanted me to never have.

My pockets got emptied along this road too. I spent more money attaining college degrees than I'll probably ever feel comfortable publicly admitting in search of the "right" man to assist me in achieving my "personal legend". I combed the libraries, started a relationship with someone who did not share my passion for settling down and having a family, all to end up with five years of searching, and a broken heart. All because a family member planted the seed in my head that if I "went to college you would certainly meet a husband there". I returned five years later with two degrees, a wealth of experiences, but with no husband. In fact, I came back traumatized by the debt from college, the loss of a relationship, and the reality that my hope in getting married and having a family may never crystallize.

Like I said, I'm resilient. And after a hiatus from planning I settled into the life I have today. Teacher, sister, friend, and lover. But no husband, no children, and no family of my own that I have created. This is the honest shit women only think but don't express.

So I have to ask myself, is that really my Personal Legend? Included in the book The Alchemist is another great quote that I lived by: "when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it (22)". Really? So does that mean what I thought I have wanted all this time has simply been a mirage? If I truly believe in this statement, doesn't the evidence tell me that having a husband, a family, is not what I really want? After all, the universe hasn't conspired in my plan, in the least. In fact, when I pray the same prayer over and over it feels like God's line is busy and my prayer is stuck in the clouds. ---I know what you're thinking "have a little faith Fatima". But see, faith is how I got here, how I figured out that I would have to create a journey that was fulfilling. Hope inspired my actions, filled my cup with dreams that presented little to no evidence in actually being realized, gave me laser sharp focus and everything else I needed to move forward without knowing that I would actually arrive at my destination.

So in my 30th year, I have to do what any sane ( or relatively sane) person would do: ask myself the very real question: "Fatima, what's your Personal Legend?"

If it isn't to have a husband and family, then what is it? If the very thing that has been fueling my actions, breathing life into my dreams isn't the thing I've desired all my life, what is?

How do I, and many others find out what their Personal Legend is when your mind, body, and spirit have been yearning for one thing and after years of searching you have not achieved what you set out to achieve.

In the end of the novel, and I know I ruining it for those who haven't read it, The Shepard Boy arrives at the pyramids to locate his treasure only to start digging in the sand furiously and be stopped by a group of rebels who beat him almost to death. The well he's created in the sand is deep and yet no treasure is uncovered. Instead, he's defeated and the rebels mock him for searching for the treasure. Humiliated, he returns back to his homeland, gathers a new flock of sheep and returns to place where he started. There, he finds out that his treasure was buried under the same tree where he was when he was inspired to go in search of his treasure.

Irony? God's trick? I don't know.

The Shepard boy met a lot of people who changed his life, showed him things about himself he never knew, and he even fell in love with a desert woman (named Fatima no less) but what he searched for was where he began all along.

So where did I begin? What was at the root of the tree that I sat under when I became inspired to go in search of my treasure? Is there more left on this journey, or have I returned to the place where I began? If all I am to take from the last 15 years of searching is the gifts of the journey, when will I know I have returned home to the place where I started? What if I don't know where that place is? Am I the inevitable Shepard, roaming, herding sheep who can't care for themselves, or am I, manifesting my Personal Legend?