As I turned on my computer, a Quora pop-up appeared with “a question for the day.” Someone had written, “I’m 25-years-old. What should I do with my life?” I chuckled to myself. I was tempted to write back, “I’m 47-years-old. What should I do with mine?”
I remember how stressful it was to be young and have that whole huge blank slate of life stretching out in front of you. Your life is so structured as a child and a student and then all of the sudden it isn’t. I think that we go through periods of life where we pick a certain path and we feel that comfort and confinement of structure. We get married, start families, start career paths that feel comfortable and we take that direction for a while until something, either inside of us or outside of us, or sometimes both, disrupts our current path and brings us back to that question, “What should I do with my life?”
I commiserate with the author of that question. He or she is wanting definiteness. He or she is wanting “the rule book of life”, with guaranteed results. We all think that we want that, especially in scary times of unrest, with all of the negative news swarming around us, creating fear and uncertainty at every turn. Reality is though, a great, big fun part of life is the unknown, the possibilities and the surprises. Alice Sebold wrote, “Sometimes the dreams that come true, are the ones you never even knew you had.”
There are no “shoulds” in life. Other people may try to “should” on you. You may “should” on yourself, but reality is, there are no “shoulds.” There are consequences to every action. Good consequences and less than good consequences come from every choice that we make, but in reality there are no “shoulds.” Depending on how you look at that statement, that can be freeing or scary as hell.
As a mother of young twenty-somethings, I wish I could wrap them and the Quora question-asker, and all of us, in my arms and say, “Just live. Just be. Follow your inclinations, passions, and interests and see where they take you. Be kind and loving to all people, and all things and remember that includes yourself. Trust in the forces bigger than you, remembering that you have limited vision of the bigger, unfolding picture. All is well, even when it doesn’t feel that way.”
I think that there are giant, strong arms and wings wrapped around all of us, whispering these very words in our ears. We just forget to listen to the whispers sometimes when the world is so loud and busy and full of unrest. All is well, though. All is well.