Vulnerability Bailey Morledge

STATEMENT 1: In his homily at the Class of 2005’s Baccalaureate Mass, LMU’s President Fr. Robert Lawton, S.J., said: ‘‘So what is the answer to this deep insecurity we all feel? The answer, I think, is to embrace the adventure of becoming deeply, and fully, ourselves. This is what God is really calling us to. It seems like the riskiest of all journeys, this journey to be one self. But it’s ultimately the journey that leads us to happiness, that leads us into God’s dreams for us.’’QUESTION 1: Why do you think Fr. Lawton says the ‘‘journey to be oneself’’ seems the riskiest of all journeys? What risks lie ahead in your college career as you embark on the ‘‘adventure’’ of discovering and becoming yourself?

Jane Eyre couldn’t have said it better herself. “Thus was I severed from Bessie and Gateshead: thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote and mysterious regions.”

Much like Jane from Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, I will soon be severed from everything familiar and commonplace, everything and everyone I have ever known in my home city of Austin, Texas. Being “whirled away to unknown” in itself is a risk I am willing to take. Granted, nerves are present, but excitement and exhilaration abounds and...