Just one breath
Just in case there's just one left"
-- Nickelback
Just like our dreams are our most favored destinies, our fears could be labeled as our least favored destinies. One of my own fear happens to be settling. I do not want to settle and i do not want to begin a life knowing that it started with settling for something i didn't really want. Now we all (if anyone besides myself is reading this) know that by "something i didn't really want" i mean making life choices that i don't want to spend the rest of my life at: like work, commitment, friendships, et cetera.
And i've probably written about this before in some way or another, but we get the urge to settle and just quit the game every now and then. in our search for stability we sometimes want to get off the ride, even though it's a pretty fun ride, and just stand on solid ground. We think about it over and over and weigh the pros and cons of settling and study every decision to the core. Even when settling isn't such a bad option, we still want what we know and what we have to last longer. And when it's time to actually come off the ride, to step down, we wanna go for just one more spin.
What if i missed something? Even if there's nothing to be missed, why not have one last round of fun? Yes, i think that is the point i am trying to make. It's like when we were kids and asked our moms for "five more minutes only please" knowing that those additional five minutes probably won't bring about major change but we still want them. We get so scared of missing something or leaving something undiscovered that we want to make sure we have ample time to discover everything that is discoverable.
The reassuring feature of all this is that the ride is fun enough to hold on to. That settling is still the undesirable option. That i want to keep doing what i do for just a bit longer. Just in case a bit is as long as we have
I think it depends on what you really want. Some people would like nothing more than to settle down with their lives, with all the stability (which some might call boring routine). Some others know deep inside that they want to settle someday, but it's something that's bound to happen in their distant future. However, some of them would secretly admire the idea on some occasions, and might even accept it sooner than they thought they would The rest just want their life to be a continuous adventure, they'd never be happy settling down and they know it.
ReplyDeleteIt's about what makes you happy. Choosing something because it's "the norm" won't necessarily make you happy, even if you think that someday you'll accept it or get used to it, simply because that's not who you are.
And those 5 more minutes? they may seem like nothing to the parents, but for kids they can make all difference; they know their fun will be taken away from them so they try to take full advantage of the little time they have left.
On a related note, it's about risk and compromise; you shouldn't compromise your happiness by avoiding all the risks, yet you should learn how to comprise in order to find some sort of balance that would eventually lead to your happiness.