We’ve all been there before. Looking out a car window on a rainy night while your parents talk about something in the front seats while your mind drifts off thinking about the profoundness of the moment you’re in.
You imagine yourself in a movie, a period-piece drama where something so fantastic has just happened that it creates a tiny pit in your stomach because you’ll never leave an impact on the world as incredible as the imaginary scenario you have just created.
I think there’s a beauty in that shared experience. The details may vary across people but the premise is the same: searching for meaning. You trying to escape the supposed mundaneness of your own life. It’s hard to imagine being sick of routine at 11 years old but the fear of “unexcitement” is petrifying.
We spend a lot of wasted time trying to figure out how to make ourselves more impressive and more meaning as if life is not worth living without a profound and exhilarating meaning. I’ve spent almost 20 years with that little voice in the back of my head screaming at me to “make something more of my life.”
Who even measures that?
In the past year I’ve come to the conclusion that the time I spend wishing I was more impressive could have been spent being impressive. Being myself.
I know, it’s kind of a stupid and simple observation that borders a cliche but at the same time it’s so true. I am sick of feeling like I can’t enjoy my youth and my life because I’m not constantly striving to be exceptional.
A few months ago I was at a friend’s birthday party and caught up with an old friend I hadn’t seen since high school. They lived in the house and had always been an honest person. They looked me in the eyes that night and told me that a lot of people in our grade were afraid that I was going to burnout. Not just burnout but essentially be dead from exhaustion at 30.
That conversation probably passed by them in an instant and was forgotten almost as soon as it was said. But it’s stuck with me. I was always on, always at 110% because I was afraid that if I stopped for even a second, I would just be wasting space.
Wasting life. I was a full believer in the idea of Newton’s First Law: an object in motion stays in motion—probably the only physics thing I know. But I refused to believe that I was capable of being worth something if I took a break.
Flashforward to now and I am coming out of winter break, the first winter break, the first break I’ve had in years where I did nothing. For a full month, I slept and partied and that was it. If I was to stereotype myself I’d say I was a degenerate with no aspirations.
But the thing is, I do have goals and things I want to achieve. Just because I’m not “on the grind” 24/7 doesn't mean I don’t want it. The idea that has consumed me for the majority of my life is idiotic. You shouldn't have to kill yourself in order to reach your goals. Instead of burning out every few months and needing something to shock you back to life, you can find balance.
I’m far from being there yet, sometimes I feel like I’m compensating a little too much for the time I spent working and working and working. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because I am working towards balance.
I want to be able to achieve my dreams but be alive enough to enjoy them. I want to look back on my life and have memories of actual joy and happiness where I was only focused on what I was doing and not what I wasn’t.
I hate the idea that your life needs to be this huge prolific thing that exists to leave an impact. Sure there’s some benefit to the idea you can make a change, but there’s a much better way to think about it. A way that doesn't make you feel like a piece of shit whenever you sit down to watch a movie, or stay out past 3am, or eat your weight in ice cream. There’s a way to hold yourself accountable and lead a meaningful life without hating every second of it.
Whenever I look out a car window now, I think about the story being written at that moment. The little thoughts that float through my head and the little raindrops that glitter off the glass. My moments have meaning because they mean something to me, and for now, that’s enough.