There is a certain fear that I often associate with the idea of graduating. The idea of moving on from one stage of life to another – just a general fear of the future, and I guess most people feel the same way. If you think about it, we don't really get a choice about how our future plays out, at least not technically (duh, everyone knows that, Aubrey). What I am trying to say is, sometimes we don't even get the time to think about where we're going. Sometimes we're just forced to move on even when we're not ready, because life keeps happening and progressing with or without us, and there's no other way to go but forward. The future is like this douche that gatecrashes our life party and changes everything, and we're just supposed to accept and live with those changes. It seems like a lot of people think of the future as some kind of 'impending doom' that we will all eventually face. But it's also interesting to consider what actually constitutes 'the future' or 'a future.' I mean, today was the future ten years ago – a week ago – yesterday. It's interesting how we don't realize that we're constantly bending temporal boundaries. I think the thing is, we consider the future to be anything that's not the present, which is just a funny thought. That's not really what I wanted to talk about in this post. God, I get sidetracked so easily.What I really want to talk about is the fact that in about a year or so, a good 80% of my friends are going to be out of university and will be doing life, like the rest of the world. I feel like at this stage I can't really consider myself an actual member of the world until I've graduated and started making decisions about how I want to live my life, where to live, how to manage costs, bills... You know, grown-up stuff like that. To be honest with you, I like not having to worry about those things right now, I don't mind taking a while in university. But the idea of taking longer than others to figure out life or to do life haunts me a little bit. It's like a euphemism for getting left behind.
Before I moved to New Zealand with my family, I was in my freshman year of high school in the Philippines. Just for a little bit of a background info, the Philippines follows the American system closely when it comes to education (and most other things – COLONIZATION!), which is quite different to what we have here in New Zealand. So naturally, everyone who were in the same batch as me graduated high school about two years before I did. Some of them are now well on their way to finishing their college degrees. It feels weird catching up with them and saying that I'm only on my second year of university (with two and a half more years to go – assuming that I pass everything). It's not like I'm ashamed or anything, it's just weird. But then again, I know very little about college in the Philippines OR in America, so I probably shouldn't say much.
A lot of the people that I know often talk about work and getting jobs and getting paid and moving out and independence, independence, independence (although I would argue that no one is truly independent – no matter what, there is always interdependence – there goes my psych analysis for this post). I guess that's why most of the time I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like I should be getting a job, I should be moving out... I should be doing all these things but I'm not – why is that? I feel like I'm often surrounded by things that make me think that my current position in life is not where I'm supposed to be. That I'm supposed to be somewhere else by now like everyone else. But that doesn't seem right to me, and it puts me in a really weird state most of the time, which isn't too nice.Often when I think about these things, I realize that as much as I'd like to take my time to get myself together and figure things out, as much as I'd like to think that I've still got all the time in the world (and I know I do), it's still a bit concerning. But I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing. I mean, isn't that normal? Doesn't that just make any person more human? I feel like I'm at this point in my life where everyone that I know are going places and it seems like I'm very static and unable to keep up with anyone and that's not really okay but at the same time it is. Yes, sometimes I do wish that I was doing more with my life, but I think that the river runs its course differently for everyone and I'd really like to believe that my river is just stuck in traffic (wait, what?) and is just taking a lot of detours so that I can get to where I need to be safely.
Anyway, I guess the bottom line is to know the importance of not losing sight of who you want to be and where you want to go. Everything in between is just a big roller coaster ride. I shouldn't try to give advice because I'm terrible at following my own advice, but that's the kind of 'take home message' that I want to leave with this post. Whatever you're going through, there's bound to be someone else somewhere who's going through/have gone through the same thing – let's all take a chill pill and eat some tacos together or something.
Take care of yourself.
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