Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing… Anyone laughing yet?
I learned this trick from my poetry prof last sem. Who knows where he picked it up from. He would tell us that when our brains ate empty to keep writing “nothing” over and over until eventually “nothing” becomes something. After all, our brain are rarely ever that empty.
Nothing nothing nothing I don’t know where I’m going with this… Oh, or maybe I do. Maybe that’s the point.
It’s okay not to know where you’re going.
In writing, romance, and life.
Oh, and education.
As of late, I’ve encountered quite a few people who think we have to have it all planned right now. By fifteen, we have to know what we want to study. By twenty, we have to have a career set. By twenty-five, we have to know where we want to live, who we want to marry and basically everything else that comes with being an adult.
Um, hello, have you met Gen Z? We’re one of the most passionate yet indecisive people in the world.
So few of us are lucky to know.
Or occassionally, like me, stubborn.
I have a plan, I like my plan, no one interfere with my plan please. Except I wanted to be a full time novelist and only a novelist three years ago. Then I wanted to be a high school teacher. Now I want to be a college professor who also owns a bookstore and write novels, poetry, articles, essays, music, this blog…
If I, deemed a responsible young woman who knows exactly what she wants by my father, can change what she wants (or I suppose add on to) in the past three years alone, how the hell is anyone supposed to make a sound decision?
Because decisions are temporary.
Plans are ever changing.
And I know the majority of parents out there, whether it be because you’re accomplished or you’re hoping your children will be will disagree. And that’s great for you. But you won’t get anywhere in life pretending you know it all today because you don’t.
A few years ago I was adament I would always live in the same town, then I ran for the hills as soon as college apps rolled around.
I used to want to be a model and mail man (according to my mother) when I was younger apparently, and now I make eyes at them instead.
Plans are useless.
Decisions are good. When you’re certain.
To be honest, it’s something I learned from my boyfriend more than anyone. Thinking things through. At the same time, and it’s something I learned from my dad, you can’t spend forever thinking. Because when you’re on a highway, you gotta think real quick left or right or you’ll crash. You can always take a UTurn later.
But what if there is no U-turn? Because sometimes there isn’t.
I mean, I suppose there is. But at what cost?
At the same time, not taking a quick decision also has its costs, yes?
How can I love two men with opposite ideologies?
But are they so opposite?
At the core, it’s all about the same: making the most of life and not losing time.
In one, you’re given time to think before making a choice you’ll regret to save yourself the time it would take to rectify the course you’ve set yourself on. In another, you’re aiming at not losing time by spending too much time thinking about which way to go.
But a highway is easy. There’s – what? – four lanes? And you have Google Maps.
But what about real life?
It’s a generational thing.
Parents, older siblings, estranged aunt who had to take us in at five, or maybe it was father’s best friend, or just the couple next door, whoever raised us…
They fought their whole lives to make our lives great. So when we don’t have all our plans set to execute, they get dissappointed.
But it’s not our fault. Just as much as it’s not theirs.
For them, they get to close their eyes and envision a whole future. A nice house, a nice car, a good family. That’s the ultimate goal.
But us?
We can only see as far as we can see.
Because we’re grounded in reality.
Because it’s not about the destination for us. It’s about how we get there. It’s about every grain of gravel that crosses our path. It’s the recognition that this matters.
At the end of our lives, we’ll all care a lot less about how many zeros we have in our bank account and more about the amount of times we laughed at our teachers and supervisors’ dad-jokes that flew right over our heads, the enriching experiences we were given the opportunity for whether it’s a four-year university, two-year community college, the military, a vocational school, or straight into the workfield. Those days spend behind a front desk or at a cash register or waiting tables and how we learned to answer a phone or log in our hours correctly will matter. Whether it’s arts or STEM or something else, it will matter that we were given the chance to pursue something we love, not something we were forced to do, or worse, did because we didn’t know what else to do.
There’s nothing wrong with a U-turn, as long as we don’t feel like we wasted our time. There’s nothing wrong with switching careers or switching majors as long as we loved every moment before we switched.
There’s everything wrong with being forced to just pick something, being rushed, and “choosing” something we hate only to have a mid-life crisis about it twenty years later.
Finding something you love is beautiful.
But giving yourself, giving us, the time to find something we love is crucial.
