Accepting where we are in life after envisioning more glory than what we have received is one of the most difficult things. Letting ourselves accept that we are not defined by the unrealistic goals we didn’t reach is crucial in loving life a little bit more.
I spent my childhood envisioning what I would do with my life when I was older. Become a veterinarian, famous artist, movie star. All of these were unrealistic options considering I hadn’t gotten much time to know myself, what I liked, or who I wanted to form myself into yet. However, I pushed myself into fitting into one of those boxes, telling myself what I needed to accomplish when I hadn’t even entered high school yet. Now, here I am, a freshman at the college I knew I was going to attend since I was a child, and I’m upset with myself. I feel like I have only half accomplished what I should have at this point and it’s a very isolating feeling. I came in thinking I knew what I wanted to do, something that was already a “downgrade” from the ambitious careers I thought I should be doing: becoming an Elementary Education major. Teaching is such a respectable and important career, but it will never be idolized in the way that becoming a movie star or a CEO is.
Coming to terms with this, accepting that it’s perfectly okay to not have everything you dreamed of at one given moment, is one of the hardest things to do. I can see how it can feel like you’re letting the younger version of yourself down but trust me, you’re not. The amount of times I have made goals for myself and then fallen into states of stagnant behaviors due to disappointment for not completing the tasks is too high. We hold ourselves to standards that aren’t realistic and then tell ourselves it’s not acceptable to be upset and that we have to move on from sadness quickly.
I decided to sit down and talk to some people I know and see what they thought about this and what they had to say to either give me some peace of mind or help me analyze the fears and come up with solutions myself. The number one thing people said was basically, “I’m 18/19 years old. Being disappointed in myself when I have so much life left to live isn’t fair to who I will become.” Each time someone said that to me, it hit me deeper. I think we need to recognize that being harsh to our own selves is not a productive behavior to have. Being positively constructive to yourself is vital to improve who you are and to become the person you have envisioned yourself being. It gave me comfort to know that basically no one knows what they are doing right now. We truly do not know what the future holds for any one of us; we don’t even know what the next five seconds holds, so being mad at ourselves for not being miles past a finish line that is years away will never make us feel like we are worth it. That’s the hardest thing, knowing we are all worth it. Great things do not have to come in huge packages or solve every problem we have in minutes. Getting out of bed is a good enough accomplishment some days because everyone knows how hard it can be.
The overwhelming majority of people I talked to said they were in fact not where they said they would be at this time and yet, very few people were mad about it. Goals change, expectations of self and those around us change, we as individuals can do full 180s and the goals we created two months ago can not align with who we think we are now. It’s okay! It’s completely normal! It is also so important to remember that you should not let anyone, including yourself, force you to stay on a path that is not giving you joy or satisfaction. We have so little time to live, it just wouldn’t be fair to let yourself be unhappy. I truly believe that the purpose of life is to find the most joy you can and bask in it for as long as possible. We all got this, even if you don’t think so. You are exactly where you are supposed to be.