"One year will change a life forever."
As we rang in the New Year, and a new decade, last week, I read and heard many people wondering where they were and what they were doing ten years ago when we rang in the new millennium. As I sat and listened to them, or read what they wrote, I asked myself the same question. Where was I, at that very moment, ten years ago? Well, the boring answer is I was babysitting, while my cousins went out and partied in the New Year. I had just turned fourteen, in eighth grade, six months away from graduating. I was young. I was very young, innocent, and naive. I had dreams and aspirations; dreams I never thought could be deterred in any way, and aspirations I thought I would reach.
Now it is ten years later. I am twenty-four. I am no longer (as) young, and definitely no longer innocent and naive. I still have those dreams and aspirations I had back then, but these days they include the real world, reality, and everything in between, everything that could, and does, get in the way. I have a Bachelor's degree that gets me no where, no job, and loans to pay off. More than anything else though, I have no idea in what direction my life is headed. Ten years ago, I had it mapped out to a "T."
Then I thought about where I was last year, how I celebrated New Years then. As I recalled, I remembered that when I rang in 2009 last year, I had everything mapped out then as well. Granted, there had been some bends in the road, but for the most part, I knew where I was headed. My life was on track, going in the right direction, the direction I wanted. I had a job, I was working on getting into law school, I had a great relationship (that I thought I knew where it was headed), and great family and friends. Things were going well. Now, it is a year later, and nothing has gone the way I planned. At all. Almost everything has changed.
I realized then that a life can change greatly in ten years, and is expected to change greatly in that time span. After all, ten years is a long time. But a year can be a long time, too. Life can change just as much in one year as it can in ten. Mine did, and it taught me to expect the unexpected, that I can plan all I want, but that G-d might be laughing at me for planning. I have learned to do my best, try my hardest, and not give up, but I have also learned to take things as they come. So, here's to a 2010 that will bring the unexpected, inspiration, change for the better, and the realization of childhood dreams.
3 comments:
Gosh this makes me feel old, ten years ago you were 14 and in eighth grade, and I was 17 and a senior in HS...
Hehe. Yeah, I hear you. Like I said, ten years is a long time... ;-)
It's weird to think about where we all were ten years ago. Life seemed so simple then. Like you said, I felt that I had everything mapped out, and I really thought that things would go exactly the way I thought they would. As the years went on, and my dreams did not happen as I thought they would, I would make little changes in my goals. Ten years ago it was, "I will have a record deal by the time I graduate high school". Then it became, "I will have a record deal by the time I graduate college". Then...well, you get the idea. I kept having to adjust my plans. Maybe adjust isn't the best word to use. I get what you're saying though. I was looking at an old album cover I made for a demo EP I wanted to release in 2008. It didn't happen for a bunch of different reasons, but looking at it now in 2010 I became very sad. I was mad at myself. Why couldn't I have released it then? Maybe I could have been more successful with my music by now had I done that. Now I'm right back there. I made a new album cover, a new demo EP with different songs, and still I am hoping that it will bring me success. I guess is it different now though. Now I am older, more experienced in my music, and more determined to make every single part of my dreams come true. I don't really know where I'm going with this. I guess it's just weird to think about where you are at different points in you life and how things change, whether you want them to or not. It sucks that dreams have to be pushed farther and farther from our reach, but perhaps as we grow older they do become closer because we are one day closer to seeing them come true.
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