1. I thought I knew what beauty was.
Ever since I was little, my perception of beauty has always been a very “Disney-fied” view. When I thought of true beauty, I saw a woman with a tiny figure, perfect hair, and a flawless complexion. And I’ve spent the better half of my life completely absorbed in trying to obtain that idea of beauty. I would be lying if I said I still didn’t fall into this trap of trying to meet these impossible standards. But now I have grown to know that true beauty comes in many shapes and sizes and in the soul of the person that lies beneath the exterior.
Our culture is obsessed with the way we look and there’s no denying or escaping it. Beauty can be endlessly defined because each individual person has an endless amount of qualities about them that are beautiful. Once I realized that, I found that my true beauty lied in the acceptance of who I was as a person and not by my appearance.
2. I thought I knew what would make me happy.
Other people’s opinions have always had heavy weight on me. I have always been more concerned with how others saw me than how I saw myself. I thought if I was the prettiest, smartest, best, then I would be happy.
But here’s the thing, life just isn’t defined by how much prettier or smarter or better we are than everyone else.
True happiness lies in the love that we have for others, for the natural world, for ourselves. I have never been happier than when I am surrounded by people or places I love. I have never felt more fulfilled in life than when I feel truly loved in return. And in those moments, all the petty things about life that I sometimes obsess about don’t seem that important.
3. I thought I knew what love was.
This is another view about the world that was incredibly skewed. I thought love was this grand, supernatural force where we find our Prince Charmings and always end up together. I thought that once you find that love, it is perfect and simple and uncomplicated. To me, love was just something that happens and you have it for forever.
But love really is not those things. It’s not perfect; it hurts sometimes; it’s not always fair. And that’s ok. Just because we have some problems along the way doesn't mean love is not true or real. Love means work, which is something you kind of have to experience in order to understand. Sometimes love isn’t returned. And I didn’t realize that at first either. Once I got pulled out of the misconception that love is always romantic/perfect, I began to really appreciate the “real world” love instead of the fantasy I had drilled into my brain.
4. I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life.
Alright, this one I may have fudged on a little bit. I thought I knew in general what I wanted to do in life. I knew I wanted to write. But now, I’m stuck in this weird zone where I really don’t know what I want to do with myself, with this period of time I have been given to make an impact on the world.
After talking to people much older than I, I’ve kind of realized that no one knows where they’re doing in life. No one knows what they want to do. My dad recently said to me, “I have no clue what I want to be when I grow up.” So perhaps that’s just a reoccurring theme of life. Finding a purpose is a lifelong challenge, a lifelong struggle. A career choice isn’t necessarily going to give us that. Finding fulfillment in the things we do whether it be a career, hobby, charity, or just in our daily lives is what truly we should be “doing” with our lives.
5. I thought I knew hard work always paid off.
Ever since we were little, I think we’ve all been told that if we work hard, we can achieve anything. And I believe in that. To some extent. Hard work is important and is vital to achieving any sort of goal. But it’s not always a guarantee. Hard work, a lot of the times, is in vain and is unrewarded. And that may not be fair or a very nice thing to hear.
I never thought life would be easy, but I did think I could have everything if only I worked hard enough. And just because that's not always true doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work for the things we want any more. Perhaps the thing we should tell our kids is, “hard work doesn’t always pay off. But when it does, everything you have done before is so worth it.”
6. I thought I knew what being an adult meant.
I thought being an adult meant mortgages, and taxes, and an office job, and boring things. And yes, being an adult does include those things. Being an adult also includes other unpleasant things like having to buy groceries, having to clean everything always, sleepless nights, broken hearts, and just overall physical, emotional, and financial exhaustion...and I’m just in college.
There are some things about being an “adult” that I didn’t expect either. I didn’t expect the level of freedom that comes along with being an adult. I didn’t expect being an adult to mean eating pop-tarts for every meal, doing really cool and exciting things, appreciating a lot of the little things in life I took for granted...
I think everyone’s view of “being an adult” is very skewed. Yes, it’s responsibility and freedom and sometimes boring things. But it’s also a lot of fun things. But mostly, I think being an adult is being a child trying to figure out how to do life by ourselves one day at a time. Because when it comes down to it… no one really has any idea what they’re doing.
7. I thought I knew everything there was to know.
I thought life was simple. I thought life had certain rules and guidelines and that everyone knew them and that I knew them, but that’s really not it. My best guess is that “life” is just the period of time you have from the moment your heart starts beating to the moment it stops.
But perhaps “life” just isn’t that simple. And all the things we thought we knew are actually always just up for interpretation.
