If one day you woke up and life gave you a do-over button, would you use it? I would not. Why change a course my life took that made me who I am today?

When I was young my mother used to always tell me that people cannot be perfect. That’s the whole point of being human, is that we make mistakes and we learn from them. God did not intend for us to have no flaws, and he did that, because the only thing in this world that is perfect, is God himself. Our mistakes in life make us better, make us smarter, and make us stronger. We need to mess up and we need to fall. Otherwise, how will we ever learn how to stand on our own two feet. There is a life we were all put on this earth to live, and when we do something wrong, it leads us to the path that we were meant to be on in the first place even if that means our paths are long and winding.

As children even though we’re told over and over again that nobody is perfect, as we get older we’re conditioned to believe the importance of perfection. We have to have the perfect scores and grades. We have to be the perfect student and the perfect athlete. We must be perfectly composed at all times, have the perfect body, and appearance. Through middle school, we are told how we need to work hard because that’s what sets the stage for high school, and we have to shoot for the stars if we want to have a fighting chance at a good college.

Once you are in college, you have to once again push yourself as far as you can in order to get into any graduate school at all, or have a competitive resume. We are at a point now, where even with the perfect grades, and test scores, it does not mean anything unless you’ve succeeded at every possible extracurricular, too. When will we begin to realize that perfection does not exist? It does not matter how much we strive for it, it is unattainable. Even if we are the best, in our minds, there is always better. The world sets the bar high for us, but we set the bar even higher for ourselves. We are riddled with anxiety and depression, and, at the end of the day, it is not worth it.

As a generation we are very hard on ourselves for every little thing we do wrong. In the end of the day, we need to take a step back and take a deep breath. Life will throw curve ball after curve ball at us, and that’s exactly what makes it life. Let’s stop taking little things so seriously. What is meant to happen, will happen. We need to always give everything our best shot, and trust in the fact that there is someone looking out for us. We will rarely ever be faced with anything so awful that we cannot come out of it a better person. When we make our mistakes, regardless of if its academic, socially, or other parts of our life, things will always work out somehow.

As millennials we are so strong. We stand up for social justice, we stand up for what we believe in, and we stand up for each other. We have a lot going against us, but we have a lot going for us too. Stop being your own worst enemy. You do not have to be perfect in life, you just have to try your best. Do not waste time worrying about all the things you could have done differently. Do not waste your time crying over everything in your life that went wrong. Use the time instead to understand what life, and what God is trying to teach you. Instead of wishing you could change the past, look forward to what is to come.