I've seen some combination of movies and read stories that are really big on the whole following your dreams thing, choosing a life, and whatever. I'm always left with the feeling of, "Yeah, that's cute, but a little naive and, uh, dumb." No, I'm not a hater, and feeling inspired to do something or be someone is not a bad thing. It's just that you can't really fully commit to whatever it is you're after, because you never have enough information.
While this is certainly a variation on what I wrote a few months ago, about embracing chaos and stopping the attempt to check all of the boxes about what you're supposed to do in life, it occurs to me that there's more to it. Early in life, we tend to form a lot of ideals, and worst of all, there's an expectation that we need to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives. Really think about that for a moment. When you graduate from high school, it's expected that you either learn a trade or go to college and study something related to what you want to do... for the next 45 years or so. I can say for certain that what I do today wasn't really even a thing when I started college. Indeed, that's why I decided I was going to make television shows or be a famous DJ or maybe own a radio station.
Fine, some people decide early on that they're going to be a doctor, and that's what they do. I would say that's still the exception and not the rule. For the rest of us, we can't commit to a precise future because we just don't have enough information. It's not constructive to look at deviation from our path as some kind of character flaw or an inability to commit to something. I know that Diana and I could never have foreseen our current situation at age 18, but we did make choices along the way that got us here, far from where we thought we were going. It's probably better, definitely not worse, but more precisely it's just different. Indeed, sticking to a chosen path is a sign of stubbornness, immaturity and total disregard to the possibilities we can't yet see.
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