Aimless Wandering

I’m fairly certain most of us were asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And as a kid we would rattle off a fancy job that likely held an esteemed reputation or some exciting appeal. These claims about what our future would hold likely came from the heroes of picture books, the adults we admired or something we heard on TV. Wherever the ideas bloomed from, the visions of what we would someday be were the perfect topic for conversations because you could flaunt your aspirations like a trophy. They were statements of fact to our naive, young minds.

Those questions never really ceased, they just got re-worded: Where are you going to school? What do you want to study? What are you going to do? And now instead of statements full of certainty the responses are weak guesses that cover up what we often want to say: I DON’T KNOW.

At first this realization is scary, sad and shameful. I had awhile to think about what it is I want to do with my life. I had some wonderful opportunities. So, how can I not know? My observation is that we reach the age of being able to truly pursue our own paths about the same time we realize just how many paths are possible. These two things go hand in hand: the leap into a world of choices and the discovery of an overwhelming number of choices. It’s like walking into a candy store for the first time and having five minutes to choose the best candy. What about the hundreds of things you didn’t try that might’ve been better? How can you possibly be sure of what you want?

Like a kid in a candy store, I’m wandering around aimlessly and glancing around at the many paths I could take, wondering how in the world I’m supposed to choose the right one.