Someday, I want to write a book.
And I want it to start something like this:
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This is my story. In the melodramatic way similar to how Christian from "Moulin Rouge" records the story of his epic love with Satine, I type here the words that will soon detail the most intimate details of my beautiful disaster of a life.
Don’t stop reading – I know we’re all beautiful disasters in our own way – but bear with me. I have to let this one out. I have to let my story fly free like a bird unlocked from its cage – which is precisely how I felt when I reached adulthood …but don’t worry, I’ll get there.
...or at least I hope I will. I tend to have a billion fantastic ideas and never finish them. I’m currently procrastinating on a project I started this afternoon in order to begin the difficult task of telling you my story.
It’s a long one. A complicated one. Bear with me as I relate to you the story of a girl who has had a great life that many would kill for – but ruined it every step of the way to get to the wonderful place I am today.
I told you – it’s a beautiful disaster.
Ah yes, my beautiful disaster of a life. Is that true for all of us? Or is it just me?
I wrote the above excerpt as a rough sketch of what I want a future book's introduction to sound like -- but really it details something more. Something deeper.
What are we living for? Is it money, fame, children, careers, selves, spouses, traveling, God or something else? What are we really living for? Why are we here, and why do we insist on making a spectacular disaster of ourselves?
I wish I had answers to those questions. I wish this article could be one that could explain it all away and bring you satisfaction, security and peace.
But I can't bring you those things.
Stop.
Right now.
Tell yourself what you are living for.
Me? I am always aiming for that next step.
When I was in homeschooled, I dreamed of going to "real school" and making friends.
When I was in high school, I could not wait to get out of the house and go to university.
Freshman year of university, I could not wait to have a boyfriend.
Now that I am in university I can't wait to advance with my dream career.
Now that I have a boyfriend I can't wait to "start life" with him.
I could go on and on and on, but it really all boils down to that. We don't "start life" only when we leave our parents' homes or start our own careers or settle down and get married or have kids.
We start living the very instant breath enters our lungs! We "start life" every single day with every decision we make.
So what decisions will you make? What are you living for? How do you want to look back on your life when you are old, grey and wrinkly?
Do you want to be wondering where you missed the train of actually "starting life"? Or do you want to be reveling in the beautiful memories you have from age 8 to 80?
For me, I want the latter. My boyfriend recently told me something that blew my mind a little bit. "I don't see life in chunks anymore," he said. "I don't see my time [abroad] as a chunk of my life. I see it as the natural flow. It's all kind of blended together."
This blew me away. For so long, I have separated my life into stages -- and really, society pushes us to do this.
Once you're five or six you can start going to school. Once you are in middle school you can start wearing makeup. Once you are sixteen or so you can start dating. Once you graduate you can go to college. Once you are eighteen you are an adult. Once you are twenty-one you can drink. Once you are twenty-five you are a "real" adult. Once you are married you can have children. Once you are sixty-five you can retire. Once you are old you will die.
We chop things up into little sections and stages and call it our life, waiting for that next door to open, when in reality life is all around you in the seemingly unopened doors. Life really should be a flow of ever continuous choices and asking ourselves what we are living for. Life doesn't start at the beginning of one of these chunks.
Because let me tell you -- some kids don't go to school until 10 or older or not at all. Some people get pregnant at age fourteen and some at forty-four. Some go to college at age twelve and some at sixty-two. Some start drinking a decade before the legal drinking age. Some people have children before they are married. Some people, like athletes, retire at 25. Some kids grow up at lightning speed because circumstance requires it. People die at all ages.
None of those things are wrong per se. Life is just really unpredictable.
I can't offer you security or peace. Only you can find that within yourself and within what you believe.
But believe me when I tell you -- don't wait for your life to start, because life is messy and it's unplanned and it will take you in directions you never imagined in your wildest dreams.
Go on adventures, have beautiful children, travel the world, fall in love, appreciate your family, get married or don't get married, pursue your career, color outside the lines, never stop dreaming and never believe that you can't start life right now -- because guess what, you've already started life. And if you keep waiting for the next thing, you just might miss this beautiful disaster that we call life.
