When You're Fifteen...

            So recently I have all but become addicted to the show Grey’s Anatomy. It’s occasionally romantic, always funny, and often intense, which is a good combination to my way of thinking. One of the things that I like about the show the most is the theme song that they sometime use, primarily for the line “Nobody knows where they might end up, nobody knows…” For all the uncertainties in life, that is one thing that is certain. Isn’t that convenient. I think I would be hard pressed to name one person who can say that they are exactly where they thought they would be at this point in life. It’s part of the lovely chaos that is living. Things happen, plans fall apart, people change their minds, it all serves to keep us on our toes and to know that we have to expect the unexpected if we want to stay sane.

            When I was in fourth and fifth grade and was discovering this fantastic thing called writing, I decided that I wanted to be a writer, naturally. I have vague memories of standing in the kitchen and announcing this, but once I reached seventh grade, I had decided to focus on something else, something that was guaranteed to bring home the bacon. In middle school, I thought about being a cop for a while (really, who hasn’t considered that career possibility at one point or another?). When I got to high school, I abandoned the idea. People always ask us what do we want to be when we grow up and it is almost like there is this pressure to have a solid answer for that question, when few people ever really do. I fumbled around for about a year and a half before I settled on education. From eleventh grade until my second year in college, I thought that was where I was going. I was set on elementary education. I was not going to be one of those kids who switched majors a couple of times before finally finding the one that was best for them. The key word there is was. We don’t know where we’ll end up, but it’s hard to fight what will make us happy and really, why should we?
            “We stuck it out this far together, put our dreams through the shredder, let’s toast cause things got better…” Lzzy Hale has sang many a true word, but that particular line from “Here’s to Us” says more about where I am right now than any other song. College has had its ups and its downs, highs and lows. Four years ago, I would not have imagined I would be where I am at, although I had hope and expectations. But when we hope and imagine, we often envision the perfect scenario, or as close as our sense of reality will allow. I don’t know about you, lovely reader, but I don’t imagine the things that can and do go wrong. We also never imagine the surprises that await us, the amazing things that happen that we never saw coming, that we could never expect.

            I suppose where I am going with this is that we do not know what will happen. It’s part of that chaos thing I was talking about last week. The thing is that we have to learn to live with that and be happy with the hand we’ve been dealt, because there’s always at least one thing to be thankful for and there’s always one person who will have it worse than you. Besides that, we’re not here that long. Even when you’re not where you expected to be, you gotta be happy with that.