You know those vivid, stark memories you have from when you were younger? The ones that feel so alive you swear it was just yesterday that they happened?
I have a memory from when I was in fourth grade. I was sitting on the ground with my classmates listening to my teacher talk about college. She told us about Harvard and how it’s the most prestigious school in the world. She used that exact word. “Prestigious”.
I was completely captivated by her explaining the concept of college. Everything else in the room went black, and I zoned in on every little word that fell from her mouth. She spoke about it as if it were Disney World. I remember her saying, “college is a time when you can pick whatever you want to learn.” I was hooked on that sentence. I can pick what I want to learn? You mean, I can decide that I don’t have to sit through a social studies lesson? I can opt out of a science experiment? “Sign me up!” is all I thought. In that moment, the idea of one day being able to choose what I wanted to learn was the coolest thing I could imagine.
That day, when I was in fourth grade, I decided I was never going to stand in my way of success. You may think I’m lying, but I am so serious when I say that was the foundation for my work ethic. I’ve most definitely stood in my own way at certain points, but I come back to this day all the time. Whenever I catch myself making jaded comments or feeling like I’m on a hamster wheel riding out each day and phase, I think of how magical I envisioned the world to be when I was nine years old. The thought of letting that little girl down is sometimes the only thing that snaps me out of a bad mood.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve deceived myself all these years. Growing up, I was fixated on doing well in school so that I could get into a good college, to then get a good job, and make good money, and support myself and my family so that we could have a good life. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I’ve always wanted. A good life.
It’s only been recently that I realized it wasn’t the idea of Harvard or college or even the “learning whatever I wanted to” part that drove me. It was just the “whatever I wanted to” that I deeply resonated with. I wouldn’t have known that at nine years old, so I imagine I clung to the college part because that’s the sensible route it takes to get to the “whatever I want to” portion of life.
When I say, “whatever I want to,” I need to make it clear that I don’t mean watching Netflix for twelve hours straight and consuming Tik Toks like no one’s business. I think the only reason we do that to begin with is because we’re burnt out from the monotony and repetitious cycle of daily life, so we numb those ambitious signals in us just to silence our thoughts long enough to get through one more day, week, quarter, year.
A few weeks back, one of my friends said to me, “We go to elementary school, middle school, high school, college. We get a job, settle down, buy a house, and have kids. When do we do what we want to do?”
If you’re lucky, you learn to incorporate yourself into all those factors. You study what you want to in college, you take a job you’re passionate about or at least interested in, you settle down with a person you love, and you continue on a fulfilling trajectory. If you’re not so lucky, you forget (or are forced to forget) that each step should be driven by you. If you’re in the bucket that doesn’t look at luck as part of the equation, you probably think, “those steps are solely optional, anyway.”
I just want to call attention to the fact that we can do what we want to do. We don’t need people’s permission. We don’t need a perfectly tailored reason that suits each person’s understanding. The “whatever I want to” portion of life doesn’t have to wait until the weekend, a vacation, or a day off. It doesn’t have to be when you’re at your dream school or in your dream job or married to your dream person. It can be now. It can be with what you have and where you are. It can also be in making the hard decisions that will help you do more of what you want to do.
No part of me wants to wake up in forty years and ask myself, “when did I do what I wanted to do?” I’ve had a wonderful, blessed life so far, and I am fortunate for so many reasons. But there has always been a part of me that felt like I was holding out for when everything would just “click”—when my dream life would sprout from the ground and settle on home soil.
I’m teaching myself that the “whatever I want to” part of life isn’t dependent upon when everything falls into place. If I continue to remove myself from the equation, put my body and mind on autopilot, and stay faithful to a process that was designed without me driving each factor, I will wake up in forty years and wonder, “how did I get here?”
You have to believe and then act on your ability to drive your own life. Those factors have to align. If you believe it without acting on it, you will be stuck in your head. If you act on it without believing in it, you will just aimlessly do the next thing without giving it intentional purpose.
This stuff isn’t easy. I find it easier to believe and harder to act, but I have a theory that once you fully believe that you’re worth everything that you want, you won’t settle for anything less.
Root for your friends, family, and those people you barely know who are doing whatever they want. It is probably taking them a lot of courage to put themselves out there and make their fantasies a reality. I want to emphasize that you need to root for yourself, too. If you have cheerleaders and spectators rooting for you on the sidelines, you are blessed, but if you don’t, stand alone with your megaphone and keep going.
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