I recently had a moment of clarity that brought about both a sense of relief and a frightening realization. Now, I don't know what each and every one of you is thinking so all I can really do is speak for myself. But I hope some of this resounds; otherwise, I am yelling into a void, which I guess in this case is okay because sometimes we all just need to shout aimlessly for a bit.
The relief I felt came from figuring out what it is I don't want to do in life. We all hear that college is a time when we discover who it is we want to be and what interests us, what excites us. I'm so sorry to say to those of you who are not yet in college-- 4 years is not enough! If you have it all figured out, I wish nothing but luck and success to you and your future. If you don't, I have faith that you eventually will. If you thought you did and had the balls to change your career path entirely, I bow down to you.
"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."
We all remember this Babe Ruth quote from the Cinderella remake Hillary Duff starred in. Granted, her character pursued her prince charming and dream school. We all have different stories to tell and different fears that might be holding us back, but we shouldn't let them. During my years at NYU, I was pre-med for a year, pre-law for a semester, a Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Psychology, and Business minor. All roads led back to one thing. I didn't care that I jumped around a lot academically. In fact, I was glad that I did. It eliminated some "what ifs" I'm sure I'd have in the future. What if I was meant to be a surgeon? A lawyer? Nope.
That's how I've always been and I can't apologize for that. Go after things you are interested in. Try. Fail. Try again. Try something else. See where your talents hide. See what you can't see yourself doing for the rest of your life. It will surprise you and it will make you happier knowing you've eliminated some of the uncertainties in life. But you will not realize anything unless you try.
Now for the frightening realization:
"If you don't build your own dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs."
I am a firm believer that people are unique in more ways than just their appearances and their emotions. I think we all have abilities that are still untapped and it saddens me when I see people not actively searching for or developing their talents.
But the one thing I am fearful of is not living up to and superseding my potential. I think the reason this realization hit me so hard is because I was always used to driving an F1 car on the roof of a moving plane (weird analogy, I know). I always knew time was precious. It is something in this world we have absolutely no control over. The seconds will always tick away. We can never stop them. We can never get them back. None of us knows the exact number of hours we have left on this earth but I am so scared of wasting even one. I don't want to sit back and let life happen to me. I want to take control of it. I want to make something of myself. I want to make my parents proud. I want to wake up excited and driven and go to bed satisfied. And that is not to say I haven't already. I am so grateful for the last 21 years of my life. But assuming I live to be 80, I've already lived over a quarter of my life. Twenty-five percent of it is gone and I will spend a fourth of the remaining 75% sleeping. I don't just have one single dream. I don't find satisfaction in the ordinary. I don't believe I was put on this earth to be ordinary. None of us were. So why should any of us live a "safe" life? Yes, safety is comfortable and it pays the bills; but you can never improve or reach new limits if you stay within a comfort zone.
In today's society, yearly earnings play a part in career selection. How many of you googled "Top Paying Jobs in the United States" at least once? How many of you felt a sort of cultural pressure from your immigrant parents, who came to the USA with nothing but the dream of giving their child the opportunity at a better life than they had, to go into medicine, for example, because it is a well-paying, respectable profession? There are many noble and lucrative jobs, and if any one of them is your dream, dive into it with full-force. But don't let money or other pressures keep you from doing what you love. When you love what you do, you work harder at it; in time, that will pay off. I don't want to wake up every day and have to go to work. I want to want to go to work. Our jobs should be the building blocks of our careers, our dreams.