I'm an overachiever graduating school soon and I don't know what to do. My passions (poetry and art) aren't sustainable in this age, and I have gotten so much "it would be such a waste if you didn't do [x]" and "the world's your oyster! You can do anything" my entire life that I'm crippled with indecision. I want to live simply and quietly, yet at the same I've always wanted to impact the world. Somewhere along the line my heart got confused and I don't know how to see clearly anymore...
There’s a thing, a beautiful thing, and it’s called intuition and you need to follow it. You need to trust, embrace and follow it. Impractical as it might feel, risky as it might seem. Shut anyone else’s monologue off and listen to your own. There’s such sheer toxicity in mindsets that follow the line of “it’d be such a waste if you did this and that”. It’s not a waste if it means shit to you, it’s not a waste if you feel intensely and strongly about it. That’s just me but I do feel that sometimes our “capabilities” get in the way of our true desires. When our own “potential” gets in the way of our passion, it confuses us. It’s limiting and it’s contradicting and it’s perplexing. True potential certainly doesn’t have to do with academic standards only; true potential of a person is vast and it doesn’t always have to correspond with one’s own goals. You can be perfectly brilliant and talented at math but you might also hate it with every fibre of your being? Does that mean you need to become a freaking mathematician? Opt for it as your life career? No, it doesn’t.
And the fact that other people get to have a say in what you’ll be choosing to do is sickening. Opportunistic mindsets feel 100% irrelevant to me. One thing is the strongly practical side of this life and another thing is people attempting to brainwash you into making the choices THEY would be making just because these certain choices feel valid to them. True passion for what you Individually love means more and will always mean more than merely throwing yourself into what you’re good at. You have to be able to distance yourself from all these voices and blank it all out, radically, and then come face to face with yourself and ask the real questions. Clarity will not come through making a choice, any choice; clarity will only come when you’re ready to act for yourself in the sense of “acknowledging” the value of that precious oyster but also not letting it dictate your life path. Sure, “the world’s your oyster” but, guess what? You can say “no” to that oyster. You are entitled to both accept and reject it. You are also entitled to pause and reflect and distinguish what matters to you more on a personal level and beautifully combine your natural inclinations toward life with what drives you and sustains you from within.
