I hate scary movies for many reasons. For starters, I don’t need to spend my time seeing someone’s innards scattered all around. Yuck. But the main reason I don’t like scary movies (as if an excessive amount of blood isn’t enough) is that I don’t like being surprised. I hate when the music gets eerily quiet and everyone becomes still then-- BAM! someone jumps out at you with a knife. No, thank you. I also hate being surprised in life. Sure, a surprise party is fun once in awhile but how often do we truly allow ourselves to be surprised?
Personally, I’m a planner. I love filling out my planner and laying out my plans for the week on Sunday nights. Order and routine center me and help me feel like I’m in control. If I have a stressful event coming up, it’s alright because I plan for it. I set aside time in my schedule to make a study guide which usually takes the stress away. But life doesn’t work like that- a lot of times we never see a major event coming and flounder when it arrives. Sometimes we do see something scary ahead but have no idea how to handle it so we just avoid it. For me, that’s the F-word. And by that I mean the future.
The future is something we all see coming but only in a general sense. When you’re a little kid you talk about how exciting it will be to grow up and get a grown up job. You have dreams of being a superhero or ballerina and leave it at that. Once you hit 18, that answer no longer suffices. You’re expected to come up with your major as soon as college begins and then map out the next 10 years of your life. Or that’s how it feels anyway. That’s a lot to expect from someone that’s not even sure who they are- let alone who they want to be in 10 years. So how do we cope?
A lot of times, at least for me anyway, I rely on myself to be my own guiding light. It’s up to me to have all of the answers and avoid any obscurity in my life. If I don’t know what I want to be, I need to figure it out this instant because life won’t wait for me. We spend hours and hours worrying about questions we shouldn’t be expected to answer yet. Kudos to the 12 people out there that have a five year plan, but the rest of us are struggling. But that’s OK.
In my life, the best things that have happened to me weren’t planned. The friends I ended up making and even the college I currently attend were not in the plan, but I’m so glad because this is so much better than my plan. So why would my future be any different? Sure, it’s great to have a plan, but we have to be open to the idea that maybe our plan isn’t going to work out because there’s something even greater in store for us. We need to let ourselves be surprised again. This means completely squashing the question, “what are you gonna do with that?” and chasing things that we’re actually passionate about. Let’s treat the future like a present we open when we’re three; something we unwrap piece by piece with unimaginable joy.
