Dreams and Goals

"Take wrong turns. Talk to strangers. Open unmarked doors. And if you see a group of people in a field, go find out what they are doing. Do things without always knowing how they'll turn out." - Randall Munroe.

I'm at the age to ask myself: what do I want to be? What job can I do with the current degree I'm working towards? What do I want?

Being a first year student at university, I'm starting to worry about what career path I can take in order to earn a good income, so I can feel a sense of security in the future. I don't want to think that way. I feel like my parents have influenced my own thinking slightly since the way they judge what occupation is best, is by how much you bring home to the table.

I feel like if I start thinking this way then I won't be happy. I'll constantly look for jobs that have the highest income after I graduate (if I graduate) and for someone who truly supports the individual pursuing their dreams and achieving their goals, it makes me depressed that I'm starting to think this way.

I wouldn't call myself a hardcore dreamer, but I'm a dreamer nonetheless. Now, you could say that dreams are only supposed to stay as something unreachable, but aren't dreams supposed to be there so you could have a purpose in your life? So that you're striving for something instead of being purposeless and living with no aspirations? Thinking that way makes it seem like human beings are just hosts. Without dreams, purpose and aspirations, I would feel hollow.

But sometimes I wonder if I'm being foolish. There are so many things I want to do, but I only have one life to choose one thing.

I'm currently taking a creative writing course and I'm worried about my career path, but I adore writing. At the same time, I adore singing and dancing, and sometimes I feel like I want to pursue something in that field... to audition and become a singer; therefore, I hesitate - my mind turns into a crossroad and I'm left to choose which path I want to take. But what if I don't know? It's okay not to know, I always tell myself, but that gets lost in the torrent of doubts and uncertainties floating around in my mind.

My sister told me something similar to what my mum told me, which made me wonder how she can have this certainty at such a young age. I'm slightly jealous. I wish I had her outlook on life. She told me that she decided to choose the subjects she didn't want to not choose for her GCSEs, thinking that she'll be happy doing what she likes, and therefore she'll find something in her future that she'll end up liking, or it will come to her. "I'm going with the flow," she said. And that lifted a slight weight off my shoulder - a flood of relief that I'm not the only one thinking about this in my family.

My mum told me not to worry... to just do what I like to do right now because that worry is something for future-me to worry about. "Live in the present," she said in Filipino (Ilonggo). I remember smiling at that because it implicitly told me that she thinks it's okay that I don't have everything figured out yet. It was like her way of comforting me verbally.

I don't have everything figured out. I don't know what I want and I certainly don't know what my future holds. I'm scared, if I was being honest, but I'll do what I like to do right now in this present time.

I hope the future will be nice to me :)

{#aspirations #doubt #dreams #goals #worry}