You’re old, old beyond your years. You’ve seen things and experienced moments that have shaped you as a person. Whether it was your parent’s divorce, your best friend’s betrayal, or your now ex-boyfriend’s lies, you feel mature. Often you feel more mature than those around you.
But also, you’re young enough to have moved on from those experiences. You’re not so old that you’ve grown hard and forgotten how to forgive and forget. You’re young, so you still make mistakes and mess up every once in a while. And that’s okay too. Sometimes you’re old enough to know better, but too young to care.
That’s the curse of college. You’re in this stage of in-between. All that there is is the right now. High school has become a distant memory. Life after college is filled with insecurity. There is only the present, which makes finding yourself that much harder.
Each semester passes and you wonder where you’ll be in a few years time. Will they guy you’re with still be in the picture? Will your best friend still call you every day? Will you still love the path you’ve chosen in life? College can be a time of doubt and insecurity.
But it can also be a great time to figure out who you truly are as a person. It’s the time to take the anthropology class with the quirky professor just because you’re curious about how an entire class can be about gender and sex. It’s the time to cut off a few inches of hair to prove to yourself that you will feel pretty no matter what.
One of my favorite quotes is by George Bernhard Shaw: “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” So if you want to be a better person, be a better person. If you want to volunteer more, then do it. Don’t look for who you are, but define who you want to become.
Pick a role model. Pick ten, and live up to who you want to be in the future. The best way to counteract the uncertainty of the future is to create a present that leads you to the kind of future you want. So much of life happens out of your control, so have an impact on what you can control.
Create the person you want to be and the rest will fall into place. Stop searching for who you are and start showing it. You can either let the ambiguity frighten you and fear over the future consume you, or you can decide to seize the moment. Stop asking questions and start giving answers.
Carpe Diem, my friend.
