Growing Pains

This weekend that has just come and gone was quite a sad one for little ol' me, not to say that sad things happened, only that I always happened to find myself feeling more down than up on cloud nine, which is quite a change for me. I was fine when I was doing things: when I was around people, but as soon as I was sitting in my beautiful little apartment, I felt a dark cloud over me.

I couldn't put a finger on this feeling. As a very privileged person in this world, I don't feel like I ever have a reason to be sad or more so that there are a million more reasons to be happy, than all the valid reasons there are to be sad, yet here I was, feeling sad for no reason. Having come out of such a mood, I would have to sum up the feeling as a growing pain. I often find that when you are younger and still in school, you have huge dreams for who you want to be one day, and often they are unrealistic - not unobtainable, but you don't yet have a grasp on financials and degrees and the general knowledge that comes with this Big, Bad World in which you have to remain level-headed, streetwise and realistic while still fueling your dreams to be a bigger, better you.

As well as that, you often think, when you are younger, that when you are in University you have suddenly got it all figured out. I remember when I was in grade 8 and I looked at my matrics of that year, I just thought they were so grown up and they knew who they were and what they wanted to do and they had their life-plan sorted. Having now finished matric myself, I have realised that is not the case. The truth does not even come close to that. You don't have your life figured out and you are only in the midst of figuring out who you are. As I mentioned earlier this year, I feel like, having lived on my own now for only 4 months, I have found out more about myself than I ever did in my 18 years of living at home, so I couldn't possibly have had my life figured out in matric.

Yesterday I watched Jenna Marble's video Draw My Life, and even she, at age 26, having already done a lot with her life, does not have it figured out. She is still discovering who she wants to be and what she wants to do with the rest of her life. Another thing she says, which is probably the second strongest message to me in her video, is that if she did have it all figured out, she thinks she would be doing something wrong because you are meant to feel confused about such things in life. I believe that, too.

As people, we need a certain amount of resistance in life. As we have learnt in class this year, the Amoeba cell, which is single-celled-organism, thrives in a dirty environment. If you ever had to take the Amoeba out and put it in a fresh environment with pure air and clean water, it would cease to exist. It is the same with us as humans. We grow through the hardships of life. When times are hard, we live and learn. If we didn't, we would become stagnant and boring. Through our ever-changing, sometimes difficult but beautiful life, we will learn to grow, thrive and excel if we have the right mindset.

I can no longer picture where I will be in 2 years time. I used to be able to picture it, but I can't anymore and I think that's okay. It's never good to live in the future anyway, to a certain degree, because life is right now. For the time being, I plan on doing exactly what I love now, and taking the next few years of my life step-by-step. I cannot make decisions which have not yet arrived in my life for me to make.

There is one thing I do know: I love to inspire people. When someone tells me that something I have done or written or said has inspired them, my heart swells with a feeling that is unlike any other. Even if I don't know anything else right, I know that, and I know this: I want to spend my life inspiring people and making people's lives bigger and better by showing them that they can always be bigger and better individuals. Through that I know I will have created something greater than myself.

Pretty much.