Living A Life That’s Unknown
I used to think I know what I wanted to do with my life – my precious, precious life.
A career where I feel challenged in a good way, a marriage, kids, a home.
There were occasional moments of doubt, especially with career. Well, I have a career but is this the career I want? I don’t even like how the word “career” sounds; it doesn’t sound like anything I want. I used to squelch it all away as normal, healthy fears. Everyone has fears. Everyone has moments where they don’t know what they’re doing. Point being, moments. Because you will get back on track in time and everything will be fine and dandy.
But years of journals, blogger accounts, tumblr accounts, random BuzzFeed articles all told another story.
And once I acknowledged that fears about your career are fine and healthy, they started to get louder and louder and louder to the point it was unbearable.
Which left me screaming at myself quietly in the dark of nights, “What do you WANT then, Thendral? What do YOU want?”
“A life in writing. A life that’s less influenced by capitalism. A life that’s authentic because everything I’m doing right now feels like a mirage for society while I’m so, so parched.” A voice said back softly. So softly I barely heard it.
“Huh” I thought. “Where did that come from?” But I started to give it room.
And it started to peek in a little more. I looked at my Coach wallet and Michael Kors bag with confusion. I don’t even like leather and I squirm every time I have to eat with my hands after I touch my bag or my wallet. Yet here they were. Part of my “professional woman” image. I looked at my 8 to 530 life with confusion. Sure, it was 8 to 530 but with gym four times a week and all the commute, it was a 630 to almost 10 life. I looked at my goals of “volunteer” and “develop hobbies.” I attended a meeting once that went horribly and in a spur of the moment, walked into the nearest library and browsed – a comfort behaviour I’ve not experienced in years except the one time in university when a professor yelled at me unfairly. A life of weekends where it wasn’t for me even though it should have been, and money that bought joy as temporary as a drizzle when I wanted all the seas and all the oceans for myself.
I needed to get my life in order. Some balance. Self-development videos seemed to be the way to go. “You need to grow to thrive.” They all emphasised. “AMEN!” I thought.
But balance was as impossible as being out in a downpour.
And I quit.
To live an authentic life.
They tell you living an authentic life will make you happier, more free, room to grow to develop. The reality is, it's pure chaos.
Because you learn to let go of all that you've been conditioned, you've been told you need, you've been raised to believe. To break it all down until you have nothing, nothing to your core. To learn what it is you want. What do you believe? What makes you happy rather than what you were told to feel happy by? You don’t know anything more.
And then to pick up the pieces that truly matter. Put yourself back together for a life that's yours. Rebuild yourself. From scratch. It's still you because these parts have been in there all along. Yet, it doesn't feel like you. Sometimes you feel new. Sometimes you feel like a fake because this wasn't the life you were used to living. Should you go back to your previous life then? “Dear God, no.” The voice tells you, louder, firmer now. Living in discomfort seems to be the new norm. But you learn to be comfortable with it either way and push yourself because you have to see what lies on the other side now. You’ve come so far already.
You rewire your brain, you remap the paths. Forget trying to relearn what success means for you, what happiness means for you, you have to now learn who you are. Which leaves you pondering over something as simple as ice cream when you're out getting groceries. Do you actually like ice cream or is it because everyone around you associated it with comfort and joy.
Meanwhile, quitting into nothingness brought a torrent of questions. “What do you want to do next?” “How do you plan to make money with writing?” “Is writing what you even want to do with your whole life?” And all I could think of feebly was, “Why do we have to know everything?” So, you make up stuff as you go. It certainly won’t be the first time. You have been working for ten years now - ten years of part-time jobs, an internship, freelancing, a "proper" job and the uncertainty of the blogging life. Which is basically ten years of making it up as you go. Ten years of having something thrown at you and having to figure it out because you’re a professional. There’s always something new to learn at the job. Which makes you wonder “Why do we even try to force growth when there’s no ending or beginning to it?”
But you put that on pause and go back to “Why do we have to know everything?” “Why do we have to pass off as knowing exactly everything?”
Because knowledge is power, knowledge is control.
Knowledge is what someone demonstrates when you gather the courage to say “No.” “No, I don’t know what I’m going to do next.” “No, I don’t know how I’m going to make money with writing.” “No, I don’t know if writing is what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
You get loads of advice you didn’t ask for. Advice that makes you want to retort, “What do you actually know when you force your opinions on someone, beyond your own ego and illusion of knowledge?” Especially in a climate where we are all living a life of the unknown.
Living a life of the unknown is terrifying, and sometimes even embarrassing. “But you’re thirty, if you want to get married, what are you doing about it?” “I don’t know.” “What about children?” “I’m really not quite sure?” “What about your retirement savings?” “I don’t know. I’m young and full of vitality, can we talk about sunflowers or something else instead now, please?” But somehow living a life of the unknown has become synonymous with “There’s nothing we are doing to spearhead our lives.” “Nothing to influence the direction it’s headed in.” “Nothing to turn this ship round to reality.”
Over the years, I’ve learned that as much as we try to be the master of our destiny, life does happen to us quite a bit. A universal system of checks and balance if you will, to even out the chaos and the calm. A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere, and a tsunami happens elsewhere. Someone splashes you when they drive past in the rain, and you give up on the interview you were on your way to and start a small business instead. So, do you know what is truly terrifying? The arrogance of thinking you know everything already. Thinking this is what you need to learn and this is what you don’t need to learn. Knowledge. Is as unsubstantial as knowledge.
If we’re speaking linguistics, then wisdom, derived through humility, should be what makes you better prepared. To wade through a life of uncertainty. It comes from the self, one’s intuition; it’s the ability to use knowledge appropriately. But I don’t know much about it. All I’ve learned is to accept people and situations as they are, without injecting what I think I know it should be like. What I think is best for a friend. What I think I need to do to turn a stagnant life around. It brings so much more clarity towards what you really need to do and so much more peace.
I’m happy with my current reality. I have no fucking clue what I’m going to do with my life and I’m fine with it. And I'm learning as I go, aren’t I? If I can learn to live a life that the world taught me to live, then surely, I can live a life that I want to. Especially when I have something far more valuable than the world - my instincts. Also, I’m resourceful, I don’t like change but I’m fairly adaptable, I’m curious about most things in life, the kind of curiosity that makes me want to get down and dig through it. So, I don’t know what I want to do with my life, but I’ll be fine tomorrow, the next month, or the next year. Life will be fine.
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