It’s funny. I still feel like a little girl.
I’m still looking around to check and
see what other people are doing to
make sure I’m not completely different;
I’m still looking around for help, hoping
for a quick nudge and a whisper of advice.
But I can’t seem to be able to catch
anybody’s eye. Nobody else around me
seems to be looking around and wondering
what to do. Why is it that I feel like I’m
the only person who is confused and
concerned about the choices I’ve made and
where I’m headed? (( Cecilia Ahern ))
I’m still looking around to check and
see what other people are doing to
make sure I’m not completely different;
I’m still looking around for help, hoping
for a quick nudge and a whisper of advice.
But I can’t seem to be able to catch
anybody’s eye. Nobody else around me
seems to be looking around and wondering
what to do. Why is it that I feel like I’m
the only person who is confused and
concerned about the choices I’ve made and
where I’m headed? (( Cecilia Ahern ))
This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to
divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one
side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find
themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and
what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live
adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto
college, or high school even, with all their might.
They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re
too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or
women who are good but not great, because they don’t want
to be lonely. They mean to develop intimate friendships, they
mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they
don’t do those things, so they live in an extended
adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they
graduated.
Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.
Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”
Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe. Life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.
Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal.
Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”
Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe. Life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.
sometimes you’re 23 and standing in the kitchen of your house making breakfast and brewing coffee and listening to music that for some reason is really getting to your heart. You’re just standing there thinking about going to work and picking up your dry cleaning. And also more exciting things like books you’re reading and trips you plan on taking and relationships that are springing into existence. Or fading from your memory, which is far less exciting. And suddenly you just don’t feel at home in your skin or in your house and you just want home but ‘Mom’s’ probably wouldn’t feel like home anymore either. There used to be the comfort of a number in your phone and ears that listened everyday and arms that were never for anyone else. But just to calm you down when you started feeling trapped in a five-minute period where nostalgia is too much and thoughts of this person you are feel foreign. When you realize that you’ll never be this young again but this is the first time you’ve ever been this old. When you can’t remember how you got from sixteen to here and all the same feel like sixteen is just as much of a stranger to you now. The song is over. The coffee’s done. You’re going to breathe in and out. You’re going to be fine in about five minutes.
When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.
THE
KIDS CLIMB THE ROOF
TO DREAM DREAM DREAM
ABOUT THEIR LIVES ON THE
GROUND. THE ADULTS STAY
ON THE GROUND TO DEAL
DEAL DEAL WITH THEIR
LIVES ON THE GROUND.
TO DREAM DREAM DREAM
ABOUT THEIR LIVES ON THE
GROUND. THE ADULTS STAY
ON THE GROUND TO DEAL
DEAL DEAL WITH THEIR
LIVES ON THE GROUND.
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Please don't remove this, or make it invisible!
Image is from tumblr, photographer unknown.
Please don't remove this, or make it invisible!
Image is from tumblr, photographer unknown.
To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens. Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes easier to die and avoid conflict than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces of maturity.
— Maya Angelou
