What Were You Born to Do?
Two and a half years ago, a question fluttered into my brain and began pecking away incessantly.
In the midst of selling everything we owned to move to France, I began questioning whether I was following “my true destiny” or merely leading my family of seven on a wild goose chase born of an approaching midlife.
“What was I born to do?” the question reverberated in my head, but all I could discern was the echoing absence of a clear response. I wondered if others might have a better idea, so I began asking around.
This ongoing series is a celebration of their inspiring #whatwereyouborntodo answers, collected from all ages all over the globe.
Annette first came to the United States at age six, on vacation from her native Panama.
Annette’s mother, Jacinta, unable to afford the trip herself — sent her daughter with her “abuela,” Annette’s grandmother. Little did Jacinta know just how much would change with a single roundtrip ticket.
When I ask Annette about her earliest memories of coming to the States, she immediately thinks of airline food:
“I don’t remember why, but I recall thinking how good the airplane food tasted!”
After months of being in the States, Annette underwent a life-changing surgery that reversed a major hearing impairment. She reflects, half jokingly on what might have happened without the surgery:
“I don’t know if I would have survived if I had lost my hearing…. I don’t know if my mother would have learned sign language even, given she still can’t speak English.”
In the end, it was the time spent in the US, not the surgery itself, which had the greatest impact on Annette’s life.
After a year in the United States, she decided she didn’t want to go back to Panama. This was unexpected news for her mother 4,000 miles away.
Instead of requiring her to come back to Panama, Jacinta decided to offer her daughter a better chance at finding happiness. Giving up her family, her profession as a psychologist, and a beloved home, Jacinta left Panama with little more than hope for the unknown road ahead.
Her willingness to sacrifice everything remains a guiding star for Annette, twelve years later:
“Part of my #whatwereyouborntodo is to make my mom proud. I know I’m not obligated to her, but I do feel like I am just because she’s made so many sacrifices that have changed her life and mine.”
Annette knows her life would be drastically different if she had gone back to Panama at age seven:
“This winter I went back to Panama for the first time. While there I saw one of my childhood friends. She’s my age and already has two kids… which is wack.”
This lingering sense of an escaped hardship has definite impact on Annette’s sense of life purpose.
She enjoys joking about dropping out of high school (she’s graduating this month) and not going on to college (she’s already enrolled), but she knows she’s destined to be more and do more than she could have ever been otherwise.
The struggle is evident as she tries to voice what she knows she was born to do:
“I think what I was born to do was to just be happy and genuinely mean it and live it and think it. It’s that simple.
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