“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
~Soren Kiekegaard~
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Are you still asking yourself that same question that you were asked when you were in high school?
High School, that sure was a fun time. The joy of going to football games, hanging out with friends, going from class to class, dating, feeling weird most of the time, and trying to fit in. (Even the so-called popular kids were feeling weird and trying to fit in.) Think of all of those “decisions” that you had to make EVERYDAY in high school:
- You had to get up, either on your own or with the help of someone yelling five to six times for you to get out of bed.
- You had to find something to wear. You had to be cool, of course, even if you only had a few cool clothes to mix and match.
- You had to get to school (by riding the bus, walking, or driving).
- You had to go through the day with other students, teachers, and administrators (you knew them just as principals).
- You had to make friends, keep friends, find friends, and try to be a friend.
The whole time you were wondering who was going to get on your nerves today, who was going to give you problems, and how you were going to deal with whatever would happen. On top of everything else going on, you had to do all of this schoolwork that really didn’t relate to anything going on in your real life. You had no idea what life after high school was all about. You didn’t know what adulthood would mean. All you knew was that going to school was what you HAD to do. It was “your job”. You took all these classes, did the best you could, tried to have fun, and wanted to be popular and liked by others. The whole time you were just trying to figure it all out. By the time you knew it, high school was almost over. You had only a year or two left to go. People were now starting to ask you more frequently what you were going to do with your life. How on earth should you know? You were only 17 or 18 years old. What kind of question was that? They really were asking you like you were suppose to know!
Who knew what you were going to do with your L-I-F-E?
YOU were supposed to know.
Here is the really sad thing: all of these “smart” people in your world really could not help you. You were basically on your own in figuring it out.
What Did Others Think?
Of course, there are those parents and “loved ones” who knew EXACTLY what you should do because they wanted the best for you. (Actually, it was them vicariously wanting to live through you. Now that they had some years behind them, made some wrong turns, they now thought THEY’D FINALLY figured it out. )
Well, you’d listened to them seemingly since the beginning of your time on earth, and YOU sure didn’t know what do. You either did what they told you should do, or you did the very opposite of what they told you should do. No matter what choice you made, you begin to realize that in the end you had to figure this out for yourself. No one could really make all the decisions for you.
You started making decisions and pretty soon these decisions were becoming “YOUR LIFE”.
So now, where are you today? Maybe you need to make a turn, maybe you need to just stop. Is today the day that you need to wake up and Just Quit doing what is not working? What will your life look like if you keep doing what you’re doing? Any regrets? Are you happy? Did you live YOUR LIFE or did you live somebody else’s? Today, begin again, you can live the life you were born to live.