“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what’s truly important” – Steve Jobs
“Let your dreams outgrow the shoes of your expectations” – Ryunosuke Satoro
Many pieces of my childhood are fuzzy. Most things I flat out don’t remember, and oftentimes what I do recall isn’t clear. Instead, vague ideas of what was sit as indistinct, half-formed thoughts right on the edge of my recollection. I don’t remember spending a lot of my fleeting childhood time wishing to be grown up, although my very early journal entries may say otherwise. (Those are still in storage at my parents’ house. Otherwise, I wouldn’t leave both you and me in the dark on this very important point). I can imagine that whatever energy I put into envisioning adulthood largely involved having it all figured out. I’d be able to make my own decisions and set out on a clearly defined path for my life.
Ha.
But adulthood has revealed what every who’s achieved it already knew – no one has it all together. Everybody’s just making moment by moment decisions with the information available at the time. We’re all floundering about a bit, in one way or another, doing the best we can. Most assumptions and expectations I had of what adulthood might be are very often quite different from the realities.
Case in point – About a month ago I did something younger me never expected would happen. I willingly chose not to renew my employment contract with the Girl Scouts. And I don’t have anything else waiting in the wings. This is the first time in my adult life that I have willingly left a job with no foreseeable next steps.
Growing up, my parents instilled in me a great sense of personal and societal responsibility. Working a job is how one makes a way in the world. It ensures one’s ability to provide for oneself and one’s family. Basically, get a job and keep it. If you don’t like it, leave it, but do so on good terms. Quit only if you have something else to fall back on. These ideas have driven my life, in both positive and negative ways. I have often worked to reach the expectations placed on me by myself and others. Up until now, those expectations have served me well. I’m happy with my life and all I’ve accomplished so far.
But my expectations of and for myself are shifting. After a few years in jobs that have left me worse for wear, I’m finally feeling courageous enough to explore something different. I don’t want my life to be about working a job that doesn’t make me a better person. Instead, I’m giving myself permission to try something new. I’m allowing myself the freedom to step back and reevaluate what’s important to me, both professionally and personally. And I’m choosing to do this outside of the context of traditional employment.
As the seasons change and the leaves fall from the trees, I too find myself in a new season. One full of unknowns but also a flexibility I haven’t know in my life recently, if ever. I’m working hard to hold my hands open, releasing the vice grip I held on what I thought my life would look like. I had always dreamed, but never truly thought, I’d be looking forward to my 32nd year of life from across an ocean, thousands of miles from all I’ve ever known.
But here I am. And I intend to make the best of it while I can, even if I don’t know yet what the best might be.
