Want to know what my pet peeve is?
When people tell you what you “should” do. Let’s say that you’re attempting to complete a task and it’s not going as successfully as you had hoped, and in strolls Joe Schmo with his mega brilliant and ever so genius brain and he sees you, a damsel in distress. “Here, you know what you should do? You should proba—“ “I'VE GOT IT, MR. SCHMO.”
No, thank you. I am a-okay. If I wanted your help, I would have asked for it. Same thing goes for advice. When you happen to be venting about something and in pops an unwanted opinion on how you should handle a situation. Now, it is definitely understandable that friends or people are only trying to help, but has it ever crossed the minds of people that sometimes I want to learn from my mistakes? Under no circumstances does this mean that I make decisions knowing that they are bad ones or the “wrong” ones, but I can appreciate learning experiences. Life is too short to play it on the safe and easy side.
What literally boils my blood is something that has recently started to happen to me as I inch farther into the college world. People become extremely shocked and even frustrated when you do things that are out of the “norm” for you. Or should I say out of the norm for what your high school self might have done. So what?! People are going to experiment, go outside of their comfort zones, and try new things. You know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. That, my friends, that is called living. Do not sit there and tell me what I cannot or should not be doing. You know the events of the future just about as well as I do. We do not know what will happen tomorrow. Why live as if nothing can change?
Things can change in the blink of an eye, so why not broaden your horizons and try to see the world differently? I will not apologize for growing up. I will not apologize for making decisions based on what I want because God forbid that I put my happiness first. There is no rulebook on how we should do things. There is only your heart, mind, and your gut. Keep on keeping on. Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do. You are in charge of your own life. Make it a good one. Keep living optimistically, keep breathing with excitement, and don’t look back. So let me be scandalous, let me be silly, let me throw my hands up and dance and laugh without a care.
Welcome to this thing called life.
Warning: you will make mistakes. You will make bad decisions. You will look stupid when trying new things. You will make beautiful memories. You will become who you’re supposed to be. Everything will work out according to God’s plan, or, if you don’t believe in God, believe in fate. Everything happens for a reason.
