As a second-year university student, I want to cry every time someone asks me “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The anxiety bubbles in my stomach, my throat clenches, and the only words I can muster are “I don’t know.” I want to shout it to the world: I don’t know what I want to be when I get out of college. I feel as though I’m tired and fragile; I’ll fall apart and break into a million pieces and there will be no hope of fixing me back together. And now I’m graduating in one more year. Great, now there’s even less time to figure out my interests. I’m drowning in expectations and regrets and I just want to feel something.
I must sound terribly unhappy, but please understand that I think I am happy. Moreso, I think I’m content. I am on campus, socializing and meeting new people. My roommate is supportive, I am about to receive a phenomenal education within the coming days, and there is literally an endless buffet a couple floors under me. I have the pieces to be happy, and I’m starting to fit the puzzle together. But the pieces are starting to blur, I can’t seem to find the corners, and before I know it I’m lost. I am utterly lost because I am content in my current situation and I don’t know how to think about the future.
Dad wants me to be a lawyer. Mom wants me to go into the FBI. I want to be passionate. There I said it. I want to be passionate about my life in the future.
Currently, I’m very passionate about my life. I love everyone and everything and I think that love is truly the best thing in the world. I am not necessarily talking about romantic love, though. I am talking about baking cookies for a boy I barely know since he likes them, opening up to the quiet kid when no one includes him in the discussion, and watching my roommate dance in a parking lot when she hears music. Passion is about loving with every fiber of my being.
This throws people off. My kindness is either mistaken for flirtatious advances or a shallow personality. My love for people has nicknamed me intimidating, clingy, and childish. I keep hearing people tell me to “grow up.” And thus, when people ask me “what do you want to be when you grow up,” I can’t find the rest of the puzzle pieces.
I want to love what I do in the future, and I don’t know what that is yet. I don’t know what will interest me in 10 years. I just want to live with the same passion and vigor that I currently have. I want to love my life and be content. And I don’t know how to do that yet. However, I truly believe that my greatest strength in life is that I love too much. I love everyone and everything with my whole heart. I know what I love, too: baking, coffee, plants, small cafes, football, stars and galaxies, the color lavender…I love my life. I truly do love my present, and to think of the future is overwhelming. I’m not sure what will happen tomorrow. But I truly hope with all my heart that I will continue to love with as much passion as I did today.