It seems like we should all have our life together by the time we get in our 20s. That we should graduate from college and know what we want to do with our lives and our careers. That we should fall in love and have our fairy tale wedding planned out. That we should have our solid group of girlfriends to fall on and have our list of bridesmaids ready and mapped out. That we should have our 5-year plan stapled to our foreheads. That we should know what we want to do with our lives and how we're going to do it.
To be honest, it is all just lies.
I am 21-years-old, and I have absolutely no idea what I am doing with my life. Sure, I have a plan – I am about to graduate in eight months. But, for a while, I was freaking out about it. I am still freaking out about it most days – but I am slowly starting to realize that not having it all together is okay – actually, it is normal.
Why do we feel such immense pressure to have our lives all sorted and figured out in a neat and picture-perfect timeline? Why do we feel like we're never doing enough and we're not good enough at this stage in our lives?
Social media perhaps?
People spend more time on social networks and social media than they do doing anything else during the day – eating, working, going to the bathroom. It is no wonder that we are always pinning ourselves up against other people – destined for failure in the self-worth department.
The reality is, people on social media always seem to have their life together, but it is never really the case. The real issue lies between the essence that is social media entirely. We're comparing us behind the scenes lives with everyone else's highlight reel – they only show what they want us to see, not what their lives actually are.
The problem lies beneath all of the plans and the searching and the trying to figure it all out. We are so busy worrying about getting our lives together that we forget how to live.
It is okay not to know what you want to be when you grow up, or who you want to spend the rest of your life with – it is okay not even to know what you are doing tomorrow.
Life is a marathon, not a sprint, and the best way to make the most of your time while you're here is by living each moment like it is never coming back to you. Instead of worrying about getting everything right, we should be worried about living every moment to the fullest.
We as a society have taught young adults to plan more for the future. But in retrospect, we never even know what the future will hold. Many times, we are faced with the harsh and cold reality that life is just too damn short. Things happen and time is cut way too short for any of our "plans" to fall into place in the long run. If we are spending the majority of our youth planning for a future that may or may not work out, we just wasting our time.
The real way to have ourselves together is by making a life that we are happy living, and I do not mean 10 years down the road, I mean now. If you are living every day with a smile on your face, surrounded by people you love and going places you enjoy – to me, you have it all figured out.
