Catherine A. Wood - Belonging: Overcome Your inner Critic and Reclaim Your Joy

I still remember that Sunday afternoon in Santo Domingo as if it were just the other day. I was tanning on the beach. The smooth Caribbean sand slid between my toes, my skin kissed by the sun. My favorite bachata tunes were playing in the background. Beautiful couples were laughing and dancing in all directions.

Despite all of this, I was asking myself, Is this all there is? as I hacked up another cough, sick once again. With each cough, I felt a growing sense of sadness and resignation.

The year was 2010 and I had completed my service in the Peace Corps two years earlier. I was still brimming with the optimism of a young professional ready to change the world. Yet, simultaneously, I was immersed in a deep state of loneliness and unhappiness that I couldnt quite qualify to justify my divergence of emotions.

On paper, I had a lifestyle that many people dream of. I was living abroad in the Dominican Republic and spent my weekends dancing on the beach. I was doing meaningful work as a small grants manager for a USAID-funded sustainable tourism project. Through my work, I partnered with local community-based and female-run organizations to fund and oversee the creation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). I still remember one notable site visit. My driver and I made the three-hour trek to my favorite mountain town in the central Cibao region of the country. Angostura was a small village near the countrys highest peak, pico Duarte, with one main road in town next to a bubbling river. The town was composed of no more than seventy families but did not lack for lush vegetation, locally-harvested coffee, the warm hospitality the Dominican are known for, and some of my favorite mountain views on the island.

This visit was special. The junta de vecinos, or neighborhood board, had broken ground to construct three log cabins with multiple bedrooms in each, where they intended to lodge tourist groups who wished to visit this beautiful part of the country. It was a historic day for the community, with much gleeful celebration and cheers as we walked through the three cabins and appreciated the strong foundations and walls that would bring international tourism dollars for the first time to this mountain village.

Unlike many in the development world, I saw tangible results from my work. I was fortunate enough to oversee community-run businesses like the Angostura project from start to finishfrom the call for proposals, the selection and funding, to the implementation of projects with regular site visits to monitor progress. I was earning a decent income as a foreigner, enough that Id fully funded my MBA in Santo Domingo. Meanwhile, back home in the United States, the job market was still recovering from the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Young people (sixteen to twenty-four years old), for example, saw their unemployment rate rise from 10.8 percent in November 2007 to a record high of 19.5 percent in April 2010, according to data from the Current Population Survey.

Yet, with everything going well in my life, I felt a looming sense of emptiness growing from within. I had the distinct feeling that something was missing, but I wasnt sure what it was. Ive since come to realize that this experience is far from uncommon. Many of us experience a disconnect at some point in our lives. We identify these external mile markers that we need to meet, whether they are professional (such as a salary level or promotion) or personal (a home or spouse). We believe that when we reach those theoretical markers, we will be happy, content, or perhaps even satisfied.