A certain phrase has been lingering in my frontal lobe area lately. A simple, perhaps cliche quote, but it’s somehow become my unintentional motto.
“Nothing in this world worth having ever comes easy.”
I don’t know where I picked that up. One morning it just appeared on the tip of my forethoughts. It’s now usually the first thought upon waking and realizing that I must go subject my body, and often of more trial— my MIND— to running mile upon painstaking mile. It resurfaces on the rare occasion that I have a cigarette craving, and of course screamingly pulsates against my brain on Saturday nights, like this evening, for example, when I begrudgingly force myself to study for the LSAT rather than traipse around the city causing mayhem and abusing my liver.
Somehow I ended up here: age 26. Twenty-six. Two decades and a little over another half on this planet. I should absolutely have done SO. MUCH. MORE. by now. Twenty-mother-f*%$#ing- six years. So very much has happened between college graduation and here. I mean, it must have, right? Because I feel so far removed from my twenty-two year old self. How little I knew, despite thinking I knew it all. How much growing, and learning, and changing, and heartbreak, and confusion across every single possible spectrum has occurred between then and now. And yet, I sort of feel as though I didn’t do anything. I feel as though I simply kicked my feet up, threw my head back, and spun around in circles offering myself to the universe to do with me as it pleased. And it did…do something. I suppose I “lived.” I tried a lot of things. A lot of locations, friends, relationships, jobs, personal philosophies, and hairstyles. Some things stuck with me (namely, the hairstyle), but many more fell away. I know a little better now what “works” and what doesn’t. I know now that seeking pure hedonistic pleasure will ultimately leave you unhappy, and that the things that truly make you happy, often times separate you from others momentarily, and are initially quite hard. These are not, of course, concrete rules, just generally true for me at this juncture. TWENTY-SIX.
By no means do I think I’ve figured it out. I certainly haven’t. I still don’t know anything, and wish desperately that I could be better at so, so, SO very many things. But I think perhaps wisdom means attempting to accept certain personal truths that may have seemed intolerable before. So, if the mundane quote is true, and nothing worth having comes easy, then WHAT do I HAVE?!
1) A growing sense of confidence in my abilities to conquer goals
2) A better understanding of why I tend to tilt towards self-destructiveness, and as such, better coping mechanisms.
3) Realization that relationships of all sort (friendship, familial, and romantic) are all endlessly complicated, and there are absolutely no concrete rules, except for the ones that you establish for yourself.
4) The somewhat new knowledge that I am incredibly reliable…to others, but also (new development) to myself.
5) That sometimes being a bit selfish is not only just OK, but actually conducive to achieving whatever it is you’re striving towards.
Ok, I completely did not set out to make this a self-help-y post, but you know what? Screw it. These are the thoughts in my head right now. TWENTY-SIX. Hopefully by the time I’m ten years older, I will have revamped and expanded on most of these “revelations.” I’m not sure how I got here, but I hope I keep going for a very, very long time. Twenty…six.
