It never ceases to amaze me. We can have everything planned out, think we know what we're doing, and then watch it all fall apart and not go according to plan at all. We couldn't have predicted that, it just happened once we broke our plans out of the vacuum and introduced them to reality. Factors beyond our control get thrown into the mix and people react in ways we never expected. Often times we get to a point where we wonder why we planned anything at all and think we just wasted a lot of time and effort towards something that didn't come to fruition. Sure it was a learning experience, as all things are, but was anything actually accomplished?
Recently, I've discovered for myself many of the hard truths of life after college that many can talk about but you can't really understand until you experience it for yourself. Suddenly you become entirely independent, which can be great but is also very daunting, overwhelming, and often lonely. No longer is there a clear cut path of sorts, no more 4 year plan, no more rubrics and grades to show you what to do and how to do it well. Just when you thought you were an adult now and were starting to have things figured out at the top of the pile, you get dropped to the bottom and learn quickly just how much you don't know. I feel part of this pressure comes from society and the way our "way of life" or "American dream" is structured. You get your degree, get a job, get a car, get a house, have kids, save for your retirement, and live happily ever after. The layout is a nice neat plan of sorts, a list that you can check things off of so that you feel accomplished and know that you've "arrived"...somewhere. But that's just it. Where are you "arriving" at? A place of safety? Comfort? Peace? Life isn't that simple and our desires may not match those societal norms. If we're in a place such as America, our lives are largely ours to control and, although it's cliche, if we set our minds on something, we can probably find a way to get there, granted it's not something impossible like flapping your arms until you fly.
An important thing I've been learning is that it's not enough to just have a job that pays a large salary or be in a good location. Success and desire most often come from having a passion about what it is that you're doing. Take this blog for example; I'm not being paid to write this, I'm doing it because I have a passion for writing my deep introspective thoughts and sharing them with others so that you the readers reflect on what you're reading and consider these things for yourselves. As humans we are experiential creatures that thrive not off of logic but off of joy and passion in whatever it is that we're doing. It's been shown time and time again that big bucks, lots of stuff, and fame can cause depression and a deep feeling of emptiness if we aren't enjoying it and sharing it with others. That's why I believe, as I'm discovering, that it's critical to find your "fit", be it with a job, a place, or even a lifestyle that you're actually excited to get up for in the morning and can't wait to get more of. One of the complaints that many older people have about my generation, the millennials, is that we want a gold star on everything and expect to be CEO right out of college. While not everyone may not be on that power trip, many have the desire to actually get a sense of enjoyment out of what they're doing. It's silly and impractical to expect a dream job from the start, but in order to thrive, you still need some kind of joy motivating you to grow, not just a paycheck and a lot of learning about something that you may not actually be interested in learning about. This sense of fit not only comes from the new shiny entry level job environment, but also from your life outside of work and the time you spend doing other things with other people. If you don't really have a good fit in your workplace, your living place, or your social community, you start spinning round and round to look to one of these places to provide satisfaction and if none work, that spinning starts going in a negative and downward spiraling direction.
Another trait of my generation is that we rarely stay in one place for a long period of time. We want to keep trying things and seeing what we like in order to find our fit. When we're in college, we have to declare a major and complete the requirements associated with that major in order to graduate and earn our degree. The thing is, at that point in our lives, we don't have that much experience actually doing real jobs and finding out what works for us and what doesn't. There are so many people that get their degree in something and then go actually do something completely different. This fascinates me because it seems so odd that our system is set up that way, where we're really just showing that we can earn a degree and then we can figure out what we really want to learn about and spend our time doing. Granted, college is a place where we learn much more outside of the classroom than we do in it. Regardless, my generation has been told we can be anything we want to be and do anything we want to do and with that in mind driving us, we're not going to stay with one job or in one place until we find what we want. We're used to instant gratification and things moving rapidly in all aspects of our lives, so we want to rapidly find our fit wherever that may be.
One of the things that continues to challenge me is that there are many instances where you have to go with what you've got and you get caught off guard by an unexpected reaction or turn of events. In finding your fit, you may find yourself doing something you never expected, saying that you didn't see that coming. The same goes for conversations and interactions you have with others, no matter how close you think you are to them. You may have plans for what you want to talk about and things you want to do, all to have the fact that you even had those plans hinder your conversation and damage your relationship. The remarkable thing is, you can't really realize how wrong you are or how big of a mistake you may be making until you're in it or after the fact because again, you didn't see that coming. Having relationships with others require finding and maintaining your fit with them as well.
Overall, it seems like life is always going to be full of curve balls and require continuous effort towards trying to find your passion and achieve your goals. There will be many times where you won't see something coming and your fit may seem like something you'll never find because you don't even know what you want or how to know what you want. But, the important thing is to keep playing ball and interacting with others because only once you pop your individual bubble will you be able to find your fit in a non-bubble world. It won't come easy and it won't come quick but the best things in life never seem to and it'll have all been worth it once you find your fit, or at least so I've heard. Remember, finding your fit has to start somewhere, so you might as well start with just a thought.
