By: Ferdimah D’costa

19th September, 2020

Being at home for the past 5 months has had me questioning where my life was heading. In this current situation, where almost nothing was guaranteed and everything was taking a turn for the worst, it was hard to say just exactly what I wanted to become.  And it wasn’t only just me; it was like everyone was stuck in this gigantic question mark where no one knew the answer, and even 5 months later, almost everything still remains at that same standstill. It felt like everything was unravelling, but this was just what we needed: a chance to reflect on everything. It was during this period of isolation where I was able to shake off the mental and physical toll of everybody’s expectations and just… live. It was then that I realized the magnitude of the pressure people put on my future plans.

As high school students, it’s almost like it’s expected of us to immediately have everything planned out: from what we want to study to where we want to go or even immediately, what we wanted to do. Nevertheless, even though we’re too young to decide the outcome of our futures, we’re forced to deal with the overwhelming pressure of what our future might hold. Whenever I met anybody, I was bombarded with the question, “what do you want to do?” and everywhere it appeared I replied with “Medicine”, without taking heed of whether it was actually something I was ready for rather than just a product of what everyone expected of me.

Every time I look back at this, the same questions pop into my head: “Why must we need to make a plan when we’re not even ready for it yet?” Why must we be so rushed into figuring out what we like and what we want to do? Why can’t we do this in our own time and at our own pace? Why can’t we focus on and sort out other things like our mental health and wellbeing, before we focus on this huge decision that would change our whole lives?

During our adolescent years, the weight of our futures are pushed onto us, and we rush to make a decision and push ourselves into the view of adulthood, without focusing on whether we’re ready to take that leap, whether we’re ready for that change in our lives. We believe we don’t have the time to figure all this out, that it’s better to just leave it to the expectations of everyone else to figure it out for us, and so we do, moving on without thinking if it was the right decision. We move on, ignoring our mental and physical health on top of that too. With the lack of actual interest or passion, the ignorance to how we actually feel, and the succumbing to everybody’s standards, we’re just sacrificing our real happiness on the terms of everybody else’s, it’s like we’re just building ourselves a recipe of disaster and regret.

If you’re a student reading this, YOU HAVE TIME. You have time to figure this out. You have time to understand what you really like and what you really want to do. Take as much time as you need, and if you want or need to take a break to figure things out, go ahead, that’s completely okay too. Don’t rush yourself into these things, give yourself sometime to think, to find your deepest interests and passions, and everything goes on from there. Don’t beat yourself up just because you don’t have a plan yet, you just haven’t found something you want to set your heart too, and that’s okay; give yourself the opportunity to find that passion. Give yourself time to make this decision; you’re giving yourself the opportunity to prepare for this new chapter of your life, giving yourself time to think and heal from the hardships of this one.

Its better being infatuated and admirably focused with what you pick rather than just settling for something that doesn’t make you feel the same, just because it makes other people happy.  In the end you’re going to have to do this for the rest of your life, do something that you would rather enjoy and be passionate doing. 2020 has taught us a huge lesson about how unexpected our lives can be, how life doesn’t always go to plan. We got to learn that sometimes its better basing our lives off our goals and what we really want to do rather than planning each step off the way, because we’ll never know what life throws right at us, we just have to know how to get ourselves upright towards our goal again.

It’s okay to not know what you want to do, give yourself time and space to figure that out and don’t let anybody else make that decision for you. At the end, it’s YOUR life and nobody else’s.

Ciao – Ferdimah

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