When you meet someone for the first time, the very first thing you want to know is their name. The second question you ask is “What do you do?”
In our society, we have the extreme pressure of having to do something with our lives. Aside from their name, the most pressing thing about a person is what they do. What I mean by this is that there is a social expectation that after college we will find a job or profession and do that with the rest of our lives. We focus on the work. The crappy part about this is no one knows! No one knows what they want to do with their lives — especially young college students.
And it is 100 percent OK not to know.
It is 100 percent OK to have doubts.
No one can predict the future. Not everyone has their whole life planned out. It's too complicated and unexpected; it takes so many twists and turns that even the best planner can’t guess what tomorrow will bring. While that thought is absolutely terrifying it is equally exciting.
Anything can happen. You can do whatever you want. Everything you want is already out in the universe.
While that thought is freeing, we still then have to deal with the actual burning question of “What am I doing with my life?” or “What am I going to do with my life,”
Many of us choose not to even think about it. The idea is too grand, too big of a question to tackle at once. High school was a much simpler time. You were told what classes you needed to take, and your main focus was graduating. Then what?
In college,no one tells you what classes to take. No one holds your hand as you agonize over which major you choose. Your focus in college may be graduation but the main focus of all your hard work should be what comes after you graduate.
When I find my mind drifting into the dangerous zone asking, “Taylor, what the heck are you doing?” the only way to avoid going deeper down the big black hole that surrounds that question, is to think about it in little sections.
We tend to think that doing something with our lives is this huge thing and that we can see we are making a difference in the grand scheme of things. We think we need to attain success to be doing something. We tend to think it means we have it all together all the time. I’m gonna burst that bubble right now. What you do with your life does not mean you have to dramatically change to course of the world, it does not mean you have to have success right now or be successful all the time and sorry but no one ever has it all together, like ever. I find myself struggling with what is the best plan for me, right now. What should I be doing at this time that will allow me to live my best life in the future? I have to do some thinking, and that’s OK. I have to remind myself I have a long way to go.
Struggling is part of the path. I have recently come to the conclusion that we are all on our own path; and whatever that path may be, there is no set route. The path may be dark and twisted and may be covered by woods. There may even be other paths that branch off and we have to choose which way to go, but one thing will always be true: we cannot change the future and we cannot change the past. Therefore we cannot see what lies in front of us completely. We may have an idea, We may know where we roughly would like our paths to lead. We can prepare the best we can but the way to actually get there and figure out exactly what we want to do with this life, is to remind ourselves that it is OK to be afraid of the unknown.
