Sometimes, today's world is just SO hard on you. Society expects you to know every aspect of your life, where you are going, and to be on track with all of your goals by such a young age. First, you are 13 and you’re supposed to try and get involved with multiple school organizations. Then, you are 16 and can now drive. Therefore, you are expected to responsible with that privilege and always be on time, in the right place, etc. Now, you are 17 and you need to decide where you are going to live after high school, what college/trade school/job you want to attend, and what you want your career to be for the rest of your life. And, suddenly, you are approaching the “young-adult” life and realize that you are completely lost. It’s like this vicious cycle every teenager goes through, and it is starting to destroy our self esteem.

We have too many people in today’s society trying to make us feel like we need to have our lives together, that we cannot make mistakes, and that we need to stay on track with our end goal of (for example) being a Doctor at age 30, when we are still only 19, 20, 21 years old! Yet, even though these people probably just truly care about us, our future, and well-being, it is destroying our confidence. It is making us feel like failures, and truly making an impact on how we look at ourselves. We get so worried about pleasing our parents with our decisions for our future plans, pleasing our teachers with our school work, and pleasing our family with the choices we make everyday that we end up getting so down on ourselves when we make a mistake, or cannot make a decision.

I am so guilty of this, and I really get down on myself often because I am a people pleaser. I want to always make my peers happy and proud of who I am which has cause me to become so upset with myself. I feel awful because I feel like I am letting my peers down due to the fact that I cannot make a decision on a major in college, where I want to live, or even simple tasks like what job I should keep to stay out of debt. But, I have come to a conclusion that I think is so important for young-adults to remember in today’s culture. I am still young. Why would I want everything figured out when I am still so young? I am only 19 years old, how could I possibly expect to have my whole life figured out? The average lifespan of a human in America is around 76 years old, so how could you possibly think that you can plan out the next 50+ years of your life? I’ll tell you why. Expectations from many different sources, with social media being the main cause for this problem. Social media accounts like twitter, instagram, and tumblr are constantly posting pictures or videos with expectations of the perfect relationship, the perfect/healthy body of a girl in a bikini, pictures of young millionaires driving Range Rovers, teenagers partying and eating unhealthy but still being drop dead gorgeous, or even text messages of what a boyfriend said to a girl about how much “he adores her”. I am almost certain that I am not the only person who has seen these posts on social media and I probably am not the only one envious of it either. Guilty as charged, you see all these posts and you think to yourself “why can’t I have that”, “why can’t I look like her” or “how come I don’t even know what I want to do and she is all set with her life?” But I am here to tell you, those posts and pictures are not reality. I have spent way too much time consuming myself in this social media trap, and I began to get down on myself because I wasn’t duplicating what I saw on the internet. However, with much time to think, learn, and grow, I realized that I do not want that life.

Why would I want an easy, picture-perfect life to post about at 19 when I still have decades and decades to live? If life was so easy then there would be no room for growth, there would be no learning, no experiences, and no meeting new people. You would just be living the same life everyday because everything just fell into place. And, maybe for you, that is the life you want to live, and I am not judging you for that. But, for me, knowing what I know now, I want challenges. Sometimes experiencing the wrong helps us find the rights. Which made me realize, I want to make mistakes, and I want to be confused. I want to wonder where I will be in 5-10 years not know what my future looks like, because that is half the journey of life. Not knowing or understanding why you are at the current spot you are at in your life is the joy of living. Because then you will experience more than any other person, be happier than any other young-adult, and live a better life. Making mistakes will help you try everything and eventually lead you to where you should be.

Therefore, don’t worry about others, about what people think of you, how many likes you are getting on your latest selfie, or how many followers you have on twitter. Because all of that is so irrelevant and isn’t going to make you happy in the long run. However, do worry about yourself, your well-being, spreading the love, being kind to others, sharing your memories and wisdom with the world, and bettering yourself. In the end, that is what is going to get you to where you need to be, even if you aren’t quite sure what that is yet. But, if you just focus on those things and being in the moment, your future will just unravel in front of you and all of the sudden you will land where you should be. So with that said, post as much as you want, change your major 7 times, switch college, drop out of college and go to cosmetology school, try something new, switch up your daily atmosphere, and most of all, just be yourself. In a world filled with judgement, just be yourself, because life doesn’t need to be figured out quite yet. Adventure, wander, and enjoy the ride, because you are still young,