Ever since I can remember, adults have been asking me what I want to be when i grow up. At the earliest age I probably said “like my mommy,” just like every other five or six year old kid probably would have. The older I got, the more variety of answers my friends and I answered this question with. By twelve I wanted to be a lawyer, fifteen: a psychologist, and now eighteen: I’m an engineering major and I still don’t know if that’s what I want to do. When I’m asked the question “where do you see yourself in five years,” I can honestly say I have no idea. 

All my life I have been thinking about where I am going and where I want to be. Sometimes I feel like I am so stuck on planning for the future, that I forget to live for now, and I don’t think this is uncommon. Take my grandparents for example, they have spent the better part of 70 years working hard hoping to enjoy their retirement and travel the world. Now, my grandfather has had both hips replaced, destroyed a rotator cuff in his shoulder, and suffers from heart disease due to the type of work he did. Now, he is unable to travel very far, so his life was spent miserably for nothing. For this reason, although I keep the future in the back of my head, I refuse to think about where I will be years from now.

In addition, the future is never promised. I don’t want to spend the time I have, planning for years I will never see. It is so rare that our future happens exactly the way we think it is going to, or we think it should. If we try not to plan so hard and set our minds so much on something, it is a lot less painful when something doesn’t go “right.”