Once upon a time, I was audacious enough to think that I had an idea of where my life was going to go; I’ve stopped believing in fixed destiny as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, it was fairly logical to believe that I’d been placed on a set path: my parents, always my strongest crusaders and pillars of support, instilled in me the idea of believing in myself, and I guess I’d forgotten to leave the childhood naiveté behind before making the journey into teenagerdom.
Just like any story which begins with that fabled and cliché line of, ‘Once upon a time,’ the direction I’d thought my life would go turned out to be nothing more than a far off and vaporous idea which dried up in the coarse rays of hardship; even as a new day has dawned for me, there are moments at which I look back and wonder exactly who I could’ve become. For someone who’s recently been placed in the humorous position of figuring out who I am while always trying to ‘be’ somebody – a sentiment shared by a lot of people my age, as I’ve come to learn – you might think I don’t have time to consider the past, but yet I still do.
I was a person with sky-high aspirations for myself: I’d wanted to go to Stanford University out in California, to attempt to find my worth as a person in a future that was going to work a certain way. When it came time to apply, Stanford rejected me, of course, because the person I’d put down on my application wasn’t the person I actually was. I was supposed to spend the crux of my life getting to know my mother better; I’m never going to get that opportunity, due to the fact she passed from lung cancer when I was a 14 year old freshman in high school.
I was supposed to be a straight-A student, tasked with carrying the mantle of all my compounded expectations while setting the world on fire – too bad that I almost dropped out my senior year of high school (while being the class president, now that would’ve been a hilarious story to explain) while learning that the world’s already ablaze, and maybe I’m just timber. I didn’t drop out, however. I made my way to Loyola University Maryland and had a reversal of fortune I never could’ve predicted, but that doesn’t help the amorphous yet persistent notion that I’m not quite living up to my potential. Ask me to define what I could’ve been, and I can’t tell you; ask me who I am, and I’m getting closer to giving you an answer.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve come to the realization that I have lived an existence of extreme privilege and opportunity; despite all of the hardships which I have dealt with, I count my blessings every single day. There are so many who I’ve befriended and gotten to know who have dealt with pain I cannot even imagine, yet there is a relatability to be found in persevering when we’ve lost everything so many times we don’t know how we ever find it again. I’ve heard so many stories and broadened my horizons greatly over the past year and a half, and that old, broken, idealistic promise that I could’ve, should’ve, or would’ve been somebody else has faded in the face of the gratitude I feel as I’ve grown to appreciate what I’ve got and who I am.
To anyone who has agonized, or who is currently agonizing, over the paths in life they didn’t take, I urge you to do two things: live in the present, because it’s all we ever have, and make the most of what’s been given to you. I’m sure the person I could’ve been is an individual who’s quite different than who I am now, yet no matter how beautiful I could imagine that person to be, they pale in comparison to all which I have been lucky enough to receive.
Take each day as it comes.
