“At fifteen you had the radiance of early morning, at twenty you will begin to have the melancholy brilliance of the moon” - F. Scott Fitzgerald
At 15, you are young and free. Your worries are trivial, and in my case, luckily, nothing that bad has happened yet. I had a naïve look on life and thought that everything really worked out in the end. But in the years between 15 and 20, you learn about life and about yourself. Does that mean you have it all figured out? No. Absolutely not. If you are like me, you have absolutely nothing figured out and you have somehow stumbled into adulthood without a road map. Scary stuff. But then you stop and realize that while your future is still murky and you have no idea where your life is headed, you aren’t the same naïve person that you were at 15.
One thing I have learned in my now 20 years on this planet, is that it is okay to change your mind. Some of it, like changing your prom dress the night before, or transferring colleges in the middle of your freshman year, will make your life more difficult. But, it’s usually worth it. It can be time consuming, like when you are up late filling out transfer applications or changing your outfit six times before going out, but that’s okay.
And because it’s okay to change your mind, it’s important to have an open mind. In my younger years, I, like most people, thought my way was the only way. I thought anything straying from the norm was not acceptable. I basically sounded like that distant relative that feels the need to share their political opinion of Facebook, close-minded and often wrong. And this is where I have changed. I realized that people are all different and just because something is right for me doesn’t mean it is right for them. Honestly, from this perspective, I’m about as different from my 15 year old self as it gets, thankfully. So much progress is being made in technology and society, why not be open to it?
What I have learned is that you shouldn’t tell everyone you meet everything about you. Being open with people is great and being honest with people is great, but not everyone has to know your secrets. You are not a library and your stories are not for free. You are a museum and your stories are art, something to be respected and interpreted only when someone has taken the time and effort to figure you out. Make people earn your trust, because people leave and you are left realizing that they didn’t deserve to know everything you told them.
And finally, in my 20 years, I have learned that we have to do what makes us happy. Don’t choose an unfulfilling major just because it will make a lot of money when your passion lies elsewhere. If you don’t like where you are, leave. If you don’t like who you are, change. This is your life, not your parents’, not your friends’, not anyone else’s, so do what you want.
