When is the last time you sat down and thought to yourself, “Gee, I really have my life together right now?” For most of us, we will never get to have a moment like that. Being a 19-year-old college student, I have realized that the people in my generation are pressured to have their whole life mapped out down to the little details by the time you graduate from high school. Next thing you know, you are sitting at your graduation party spewing out your hopes for the future, drafting your map of life to your family and friends.
People start asking you questions like, “What are your plans after college?” “Why did you pick that major?” “What are you going to do with that degree?” In all honesty, it can be daunting and crushing at the same time. Daunting because you may have just started this new journey and people are already asking you to think five years ahead. If you ask me, that’s scary to think about because a lot can change in that time. Because of all this pressure put on us, people often end up in the situation that I am in. My map seemed to be put together but now is slowly falling apart, and it terrifies me, but I am here to say that it is okay for not only me, but everyone else to have their maps fall apart. Everything you set on your map does not have to be concrete.
Life is an ever-changing series of events and nothing is constant. People come and go and things happen that change you. Going to college, switching majors, getting a new job, graduating, losing someone you love, making new friends – these are just a few things that could happen to anyone that can alter their map. I would consider myself a planner and an over thinker so I have been planning for as long as I can remember. Going into school, I was dead set on my major, and now I have been having some second guesses here and there. Not only am I scared of the decisions that I could possibly make in the future but also of what everyone around me will think because I am supposed to have it all planned out... aren’t I? But, it is comforting to know that everyone has gone through the same exact struggle that I am now. And you know what? It’s okay.
When I said earlier that nothing is constant, I meant it. Different things happen to different people that make them change their life, thus disrupting this master plan they have. But change is good! Maybe you weren’t meant to be on the path that you were on, and looking back, you see that the change was for the better. Everything that you do in your life should be to benefit you and to make you happy. You don’t need to worry about other people’s maps, only your own, because in the end all you have is yourself and you need to be happy with where your map takes you. It is okay to take a detour, it is okay to stop and redraw, and it is okay to not have your whole life together because at some point in everyone’s life, we all have to stop and edit our maps.
No matter how old you are and where you are in your life, it is okay to redraw! Take that pencil and erase the whole map if you so please so you can get back on track to what is making you happy. If you’re a 50-year-old business man who decides to make painting a full time career, go for it! If you decide that you need a change of scenery, go somewhere new! There are endless possibilities to what you can do, and it is okay for you to go and do them because it is okay to change and not have everything together.
I hope that this brings comfort to others as much as it has to me to acknowledge that other people don’t have it together either. So embrace the change and keep a pencil handy because sometime in your life, you will have some redrawing to do.
