In the generation of social media, it is very easy to get swept away by the lives of the glamourous. Or, the not so glamourous. Whatever your taste is, it is easy to get swept away by a life you don’t have but desperately want. Maybe that life is red carpets, martinis, and a whole room just for your closet, or maybe it’s painting in a Paris park with all of your braless, liberated friends, or maybe it’s just being anywhere but wherever you are. But, I’m going to let you get in on a little secret: it’s ok, and very possible, to be fulfilled right where you are instead of sitting and waiting for whatever you hope is coming next. Not that making plans and believing in a future bigger and brighter than whatever small town you live in is a bad thing, because of course it’s not. Believing in things, believing in more, is the whole point of life. But when that takes over appreciating the life you have now for what it is, you’re doing it wrong.
I never used to understand the old phrase, “Stop to smell the roses”, because for as long as I can remember, I have been waiting to get out of my small town in Illinois and into college and then to New York City and then to fame as whatever I wanted to be that month. But now that I am a jaded seventeen year old that has gone through her fair share of waiting as everyone else moves on, I have noticed that I was literally at a stand still. And, frankly, what is the point of that? It’s exhausting and anything but fulfilling to wish for a life that is already being lived by someone else. All any of us can do is make our life our own in any and every way.
Life is far too short to be dreaming of being an art hoe or a DJ or an actress, so just be it. Everything in this beautiful world we live in is only put into categories because someone at some point decided that’s what was going to happen. The boundaries you feel trapped by are all made up. That person with 50,000 more Instagram followers than you is, in no way, fundamentally superior to you. The only thing that stands between the two of you is that they are living the life they want, and you are staring at their Instagram, wishing you were them. Everything in life is made up, from the boundaries to the rules to class and race and gender, so just live the life you want and be unapologetic.
This summer, when you’re slightly more dissociated from the pressures of high school life, try on the life that you have always wanted and just stop waiting. Stop pushing people away that are trying to take you with them on their progression through life, go on the ride with them. And if you are going to stand still, make sure it is only to smell the roses. There are too many different types of flowers out there waiting for you to experience them.
