You will drive yourself crazy trying to impress those who
aren’t interested in being impressed.
When you’re younger, maybe it’s the cute boy in English
class who turns your cheeks red when he looks at you, or the cool girl who
always makes you laugh, or the hip teacher who makes pop culture references in
class whose approval you’re so desperate to win. If one of those people thinks
you’re lame, that sucks – but you bounce back. You didn’t know that person very
well to begin with. Their opinion doesn’t matter quite so much because that
person is outside of your inner circle.
When you get older and you realize the opinions most
important to you come from the people you’re closest to, the advice becomes all
the harder to follow.
There is no Life Handbook, no Guidelines for Adulthood. You
figure out your priorities and you go from there. Yes, you need a place to
live. You need food on the table. You need your various insurances and you need
a savings account.
I realize I’m coming at this from a place of privilege. I
know that.
But from there, after your basics are taken care of, what
else do you need? Do you need to have
a 9-to-5 job (do those even still exist?), or can it be something a little
more… alternative? What is most important to you? Stability, creativity, belief in the company you work for, flexibility of schedule, work-life balance, weekends off, money, prestige, comfortability? What gets you excited to wake
up in the morning?
Is there a right answer or a wrong answer to that question,
as long as you’re independently taking care of yourself?
And if you start succeeding at the thing about which you’re
most passionate, still very aware there’s a much longer road to climb, do you
share your excitement with those closest in your life?
And do they shut you down, because your idea of success is
wrong? Because there is one narrow way to define success, and for anyone else
to try anything different is worthy only of their derision?
If they don’t even try to understand your journey, then why
do you keep them in your life?
If they tell you all the ways you will probably fail at your
chosen career path, or even tell you your path has no career at all, then why
continue to give them any power over your own mindset?
If it really is so difficult to succeed in your endeavors,
why are they adding to your burden?
If they don’t understand why you don’t just pick a “normal”
career, why bother explaining something they clearly have no interest in ever
comprehending?
If they think you’re “great,” why do they have so little
faith in your abilities to take care of yourself?
If they really care about you enough to “worry” about you,
why are they not trying to see this journey from your perspective?
If they find a way to be less judgmental toward the girl who
used to bully you back in middle school than you, why are you so desperate for
their conversation?
If that person brings you down, why do you continue to talk
to them?
It doesn’t make your friend a bad person. It just means your
friend has a narrow view of what it means to be alive. They are right, and you
are wrong. There is no gray area.
There are so many people out there who want to see you
succeed. There are so many people impressed by all the things you’ve
accomplished, and all the things you want to accomplish.
You can’t waste your energy on those who are not interested
in a definition of success or happiness that differs from their own. That way lies nothing. That way lies sadness.
That way lies a person who doesn’t try to achieve the things she wants to
achieve, who settles for a life she doesn’t want, who can at least tell herself
when she dies that she succeeded by someone else’s definition.
That way is not for you.
Maybe you fail. Maybe you fail miserably. And so what? Then
what happens? Does life end forever? Do you kill yourself? What exactly happens
if you fail?
Fear of failure is a terrible reason to not try something.
You are better than that. Be better than that.
And for fuck’s sake. Stop crying. It’s exhausting.
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