As an undergraduate college student, there are many things I don’t yet know. I don’t know what it’s like to have to pay an electric bill. I don’t know what it is like to receive a salary as an employee. I don’t know what it’s like to be in love. I don’t know what it feels like to have traveled the world and to understand my place in it. I am extremely guilty of wanting to “know” my future. I wonder all the time about where my “forever” home will be located, what it will look like, and who I will share it with. I wonder if I am going to be able to fulfill my dreams of becoming a therapist and owning my own private practice. I wonder if I will be able to check off all the destinations on my mile-long travel bucket list before I die. I wonder if, and when, I will get married and have kids. All of these questions sometimes drive me mad, because how can I have already been on this earth for almost 20 years and still be so ambiguous in my identity? However, when I really sit back and look at my life right now, I can’t help but feel completely free.
I can still go to bed at night and wonder if my dream home one day will be a modern mansion or a cute cottage surrounded by rose bushes, because my dreams have not yet been “accomplished.” It is true freedom to be able to imagine a million different futures for yourself because you are not yet tied down to anything. With where my life is right now, I have the ability to imagine myself and my life as anything I could possibly want at any time. If one day I want to be the aunt that is rich and single her whole life, I can do that. If the next day I want to have eight kids and be living out my cottagecore fantasy, I can do that too. Though I can’t wait to finally have the Pinterest wedding of my dreams, I would be lying to say that once that day comes that I won’t be sad that I can no longer fantasize about the “perfect” wedding. The flowers I choose and the dress I wear will no longer be able to be changed and dreamed of whenever I want because by that point my decisions will have been made and done with. I can get so wrapped up in the idea of just being still in my accomplishments as the ultimate peace, but in reality, there is something so beautiful about the chase I am in right now. I want to achieve all my hopes and goals. I want to be on my deathbed and think back to all those victorious moments I got to relish in after worrying for so long. But until then, I am basking in the incredible bliss that is not knowing my future.