Throughout our lives, we constantly think about the future. As kids we thought about what we wanted to be when we grew up, where we wanted to live, what our lives would be like. It isn't until college however, that we truly begin to imagine our lives through a realistic lens.
We start thinking about what we actually want to do when we get out of school, what our life goals are, where we want to be in 10 years. It is during this time that we realize that we are now our future selves, the selves that we imagined so many years ago. We have hit that point of realism and now we must make decisions.
And even through college, when we are thinking about what we want to do with our lives, we rarely, well at least people like me, think about their actual future. I have honestly just started thinking about my future, started applying to jobs, and thought about being somewhere in the country other than my home town. This is the first time I realized that my life is moving forward, and it is scary because it is something that is so different but has to happen.
It has been seven months since I graduated college and I took a little too long of a break in between school and finding a real job, which may be the reason why I am so unprepared to look at my future so up close and personal.
It is during this time period, the moment between finishing school and looking for a job that will hopefully be your career, that we truly get a good look at our future. We think realistically, even though we thought we were doing that the whole time. We think about what job we want, where we want to live and how we are going to get there. We think about our family and maybe even about when we are going to start our own.
These thoughts sound the same as the ones we had when we were younger. But suddenly we go from "I'm going to be an astronaut" to "I am going to take my business degree and apply to as many jobs as possible and hopefully I land one that I like."
Our goals become lesser, no, not lesser, more realistic. They are achievable and that by no means equals lesser. Just because our goals go from being an astronaut to being a journalist does not mean that we failed in any way. We have got to a point in our lives that we should be proud of. And we will do great things with our new goals and our new futures.
Then there are the ultimate goal achievers. The ones who grew up wanting to be a veterinarian, kept that goal, and now they are attending vet school, living their dream, and watching their imagined childhood future become reality.
Even with our future changing every second right before our eyes, we are creatures who love to plan. We find a desire in knowing exactly what will happen in our lives, or having some sort of idea of where we are headed.
And now, as we get to this point in our lives where we truly have to plan our futures and think about them in the realest way possible, it is now that we see our lives unfolding before our eyes, no matter how ungracefully it unfolds.
Our futures and goals are just barley out of reach, but we have everything in us to make it to that point in our lives.
