A Series of Observations

What question are you trying to answer most in your life right now?

Of all the questions I torture myself with on a daily basis, I tend to experience this one the most.

Why is my path in life not clearer to me right now?

With each experience in my life I tend to gain more questions following the few answers I’m given, be it in love or work or the everyday mundane. I suppose that is a human condition I have gotten far more comfortable with over time, a condition that poses as a great influence for many writers.

As I continue to experience my 20’s, I feel a lot of pressure from the world around me, and much more from myself. Maybe you have a clear vision of what you want your life to look like, but reality isn’t quite matching up yet, and you have no idea how to get there. Or maybe you’re going in blind the entire way. Either way, we are seeing so many changes not only in our personal lives, but in the world around us, and most of those changes are quite daunting and in some forms, deeply unsettling.

So it’s hard not to wonder if everything you’re doing, everything you’re working towards is somehow worth it. Or as you look back, if you should have made other choices.

I can’t say that I live with regrets, I can understand why my life unfolded the way it has so far, but I do wish I had been more brave much sooner in life. I think many things would be different about who I am and the choices I’ve made now if I was.

Alas, bravery is a skill I have yet to master, and in some very peculiar ways, I need to be brave now more than ever. So I often wonder if this murky path I’m following is the right one, when so much of what I do feels like survival, not living; and yet, there are also pockets of that light I see and feel in the things I do, like my writing, that gives me hope and feels very right.

I only have yet to see where the next step will take me, or even what that next step should be.

I think there is something poetic and universally connecting in learning how to walk confidently in the darkness of our uncovering paths, because when the paths become clear, there will be no room left for doubt.

What good would it be if we knew everything before the journey started? Would we make better or worse choices?

I don’t have the answers, but I do know that we’d have no good stories to tell.