Most of us live in environments that are not of our choosing. I’ve written about this before, and I don’t want it to come across as dreary or critical – instead, I’d hope that it would make us reconsider the way our lives look and have the courage to make changes that we wish to see in the world. We can’t control what other people do, but we can control our own lives and offer an example of living out an ideal.
Like I wrote about a month ago, we each live in our own bubble of ignorance as to what really matters and what is really determining where we direct our energy and efforts. The point, like I will also propose here, is to summon the inner courage to challenge the status quo and live the life we want to live. Not the life we feel we should live, not the life our family and friends think would be good for us, but above all, the life that deep down in the center of our stomach we know we should pursue.
At a young age it’s difficult to imagine what the regret of lost time feels like. Fortunately enough for us, there have been more than enough advocates throughout history urging us to make the most of our time and pursue our dreams instead of deferring them out of practicality or social norms. The message of regret is clear: the pain of missed opportunity is greater than the pain of failure. It is especially in our young years that we should look to build out our dreams and experience them for what they have to offer instead of keeping them stored away in the back of our mind, only to revisit them years later with regret or an expiring life clock.
These pursuits often come with sacrifice, and that’s where we again need to be honest with ourselves. What do we truly value? If any of our resources – time, energy, money, etc. – were constrained, what would we focus on? It is when we identify these essential matters of living that we can take a chance on the dreams that exist in our mind and direct our attention to actualizing them.
We should not worry about the limited time we are given in this life; our concern should instead be built upon a simple question: will we assume responsibility for constructing a wonderful existence, or will we defer to time to ultimately dictate our story?
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
~ Henry David Thoreau