Choice: It’s almost a dirty word for Millennials. While growing up, we are told that we can do anything we want. We can be whatever we want to be. First female president, a rocket scientist, a heart surgeon or a Hollywood star. From the age of 4, you can enroll in any type of after school activity to start living your dream.
But more often than not, these choices make us confused. We want to do everything. We want to become famous, rich, have a good education, have fun, be a top athlete and, in the end, we have no actual idea what we really want. We have no idea what makes us really happy. So many of us get stuck in looking for our passion and looking for our purpose in life.
It can suffocate us. Sometimes we find ourselves longing for the time our parents or grandparents grew up in. Your life was pretty much predetermined by social and financial boundaries.
We drop out of college because that path we took wasn’t all what we thought it would be. We want to travel and see the world, only to get back to college. We switch careers, jobs, hobbies, sports and the places we want to live. There are just too many choices, they all look great, but in the end, they don’t feel quite right when we make them.
So we end up wandering, waiting and longing to find a meaning. Looking for our passion everywhere. But the truth is, you don’t need to look anywhere. You just need to live. You know what you like to do and you know what you don’t like to do.
Dreams change. When I look around at the lives of people I have known quite some time, it surprised me to see that their lives changed when they changed partners.
All of a sudden, people are interested in things they never were, and doing stuff they have never done before. I was even more surprised to come to the conclusion I am doing the exact same thing! I thought that this was a bad thing. I was wondering why I got so caught up in the lives of my boyfriends, forfeiting a life of my own.
But then I realized that dreams change, people change and doing different things isn’t bad at all. Of course, you should never give up the things you love doing for someone else, but there’s a lot of stuff out there that is a lot of fun to do. Your life doesn’t have to consist of doing one sport on the highest level, or making your hobby your career.
It’s okay to suck at surfing and salsa, to not know anything about art, but to still have a great time at the beach, at salsa classes and in a museum with paintings you know nothing about. If you like it, just do it.
If you know what you want, great! Go for it. Work hard to reach your goals and your dreams. If you’re still looking, and have no clue, stop looking.
Because you can choose all you want, you don’t have that much say in it in the end anyways. You might work hard all your life to become a top-notch lawyer. And then you have an accident and can’t practice law anymore. Or you get sick and need to stop working all together. Life sometimes just gets in the way.
You have to be flexible about your dreams and goals. Things change, people change, dreams change and that’s a good thing. If you learn how to embrace life as it comes, love doing a lot of things and don’t get sour when something doesn’t work out, you will always have joy.
Don’t get caught up in making choices, choose them all. Don’t be scared by people who live and breathe one thing and make you feel bad about your skills or knowledge about something. Don’t sit on the couch and look at TED-clips that inspire you and expect to one day choose something. Go out there, do what you want to do and have fun. Make life your passion and not your life about finding your passion.
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