It’s been at the back of my mind for a while now, the fact that I will be leaving my teenage years behind. You know how most people say that you’re basically an adult at the age of 18 — well I guess, yes you are legal for most stuff and you are allowed to start thinking about getting that drivers’ license you’ve been really craving since you started going out and staying out late and the most daunting problem of the evening is "How the hell am I getting home?’. Turning 20 is like turning 13, you’re leaving a chapter behind in your life and things are suddenly getting more serious. When you’re leaving behind your childhood and moving on to your teen years, the problems you were faced with at the time are on the lines of “I need to start shaving”, “Why haven’t my boobs grown yet?”, “Why am I always in pain?”, “When will I have my first actual boyfriend/girlfriend?”.
When you’re leaving your teen years behind, and moving onto your twenties, the things you face are, unfortunately, not as simple. They are more about life changing concerns like, if you’d like to settle down with someone or remain the perennially single, promiscuous serial dater until you’re 30 or later and turn out to be a silver fox like George Clooney and maybe settle down eventually. If whether or not you want to travel the world before actually taking things majorly serious with anything like a career or a relationship. If whether you are completely sure about the career path that you’re taking, which you most probably decided on at the age of 13, when you had to choose those pesky subjects in secondary school (because it makes perfect sense to choose a career for the rest of your life at the tender age of 13).
I am one of those people who is dreading turning twenty for the simple fact that I take a good look around me and I see two extremities. One being a lot of people that have got everything sorted and know exactly where their life is headed, it’s like they have it all mapped out. Then on the other hand there are those who have absolutely no clue what they’re doing with their lives and just rolling with the punches.
Then there’s just me, where I feel like I’m standing in the middle of a vast ocean. One minute I can see the shore and I say to myself “Jolly good! I got it!” and the next moment it’s just ocean and even more ocean. If you asked me a year ago about which path my life was heading down, I think I would have been able to give some sort of an outline. Suddenly I can’t even map out the end of the week most of the time and I just take everything as it comes and deal with everything day by day because that is all I seem to be able to do. A friend once told me that, the best way to live is day by day, if not hour by hour, as things change in an instant from one moment to another. You never know what turn of events you might be facing in the coming hours. What I mean to say is this, there are moments when I’m only 80% sure of what I’m doing and the other 20% is vast uncertainty. This comes from the simple fear of mucking things up. You know how you’re always told that if you take a wrong turn in your life well then, god help you. So it’s that fear holding me back mainly from feeling confident to make choices, to speak up, to pursue what I desire in life, but sometimes you have to tell yourself to toughen up and just dive into it. Like the infamous Lemony Snicket once said, “If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting for the rest of our lives, let’s go”.
So if you think that you’re alone in being unsure of your future, it is not the case at all. Some people have the ability to figure things out quicker than others or they’re not so afraid of taking risks or taking those wrong turns in life. We just need to pluck up the courage sometimes, try things out and see what fits us best. It’s all about finding that shoe with the perfect fit like Cinderella, and you know that it is going to be a part of your happily ever after.