Do I really want to skip part of my life? The part of my life where I learn, grow, live, and strive to get a chance at my dreams? Or do I jump in right now–do I learn now, grow up now, have what I would be striving for now? It feels like I'd be losing a huge part of my life, one that most everyone gets to share in. I've already lost huge parts of my life to other things, do I want to lose more in exchange for my future dreams?
I always hate when people think that my life is great, that if I have opportunities like this, well, then I'm set. Everything I do that makes people say "Wow, that's incredible. You're so lucky/talented/dedicated/etc." just helps to separate me from everyone else. Sometimes I would trade all of my abilities or talents or knowledge to not have them. I would love to have to struggle through classes, settle with doing the few things I could, having the same problems of the people I see all around me. This all sounds pretty vain, but sometimes I'm really tired of not being average. Because it doesn't make your life any better.
Would I really be losing part of my life? I think I would, because it'd just be one step further away from normal. It's not that I mind deviating from normal (certainly not), but that it's one step further away from everyone else. No one says "remember the years of our lives where we were suddenly handed our dreams and then we were happy?" What's the difference between a wonder-kid and a freak?
I suppose I would still be thrilled to go forward with this, it's just that I don't know what I'd be trading for it. I don't think I could really connect with most of my peers. The kind of relationships that make life what it is would probably be difficult. I would, after all, be taking on a lifestyle that most accept only after they have fulfilled the other aspects of their lives. Should I go for it now?
Anything that I can fit in a comment box will probably come out trite... so this should be expanded over a coffee some time. :) But I do have a few thoughts--
ReplyDeleteThat first of all, I think I really understand some of what you're saying here. I don't see many 25-year-olds working day in and day out on a crazy dream of novel publication, spending their days in conversation with characters who, frankly, don't exist.
Girls my age are finishing their masters degrees, having their second children, teaching, buying houses, etc. And I'm ... not. And some days that *does* grate on me, it really does, and I wish I could be content living their lives instead of mine.
But the fact is, trading places would be the loss. Living differently might have a high *cost*, but I don't know that it's necessarily *loss*.
Living with a cost is still difficult, some days stunningly so. And I applaud your wisdom in seeing some of that cost ahead of time, because it's certainly there.
But as to loss--perhaps the loss would come in turning away from the unique path meant to be yours?
I'm afraid I don't have any answers, and I don't know where they can all be found. But I do know that outright cost is easier to live with than outright loss. And it's good to think these things through ahead of time, as you are... (There. More over coffee.:))
Coffee sounds excellent.
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