Life is short and we’re supposed to live it to the fullest right? I mean, there’s a reason the phrase YOLO started popping up everywhere a few years ago. But why does it seem like we try to rush our lives instead of living in the moment? Have you ever caught yourself saying: “In a year things will be better.” Or: “By the time I’m this age I’ll have everything I’ve wanted?” Because I know I’m certainly guilty of doing that. It’s almost as if we like to think off into the future and imagine how life will be, instead of starting to live it now. I’ve been told so many times by people older than me that your twenties are supposed to be the time of your life.

Instead, I’ve been spending them freaking out about student loans, starting a career and getting into grad school. Graduating from college last year felt liberating, up until… I started to realize that the bubble of being in school, where you have to follow certain steps to achieve your goal popped. Being in the real world is a completely different beast and it’s something that college can never fully prepare you for. But it’s also amazing how while I was in school all I thought about was getting out and the plans that I had for myself. There’s only so much of your life that you can plan. We can’t control when we’ll land our dream job or fall in love. It’s not something that can be written down on a check list. It just happens. So in the mean time all we can really do is take it day by day and work on achieving our goals.

I’d have to say the hardest thing for me to accept is that there’s only so much power I actually have. There’s a sense of impatience and urgency that seems to come with things that we want. I’d like to have everything I’ve ever dreamed of now. But it doesn’t happen like that. There’s a process and oftentimes huge hurdles that need to be jumped over to have everything you ever dreamed of. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be happy along the way.

We focus a lot on the destination and not as much on the journey when it comes to our lives. If someone were to tell us that we would land our dream job or meet our spouse on a certain day and time, we would just want to jump to that date instead of looking at what would lead us to that point.

Most of the time it’s the risks that we’re willing to take in life that lead to our goals. Of course being rational and making calculated decisions helps, but sometimes we have to just be willing to live our lives to the best of our abilities and know that it’s going to work out.

The unknown can be scary and sometimes crippling if you let it control you. And while focusing on the present and what we can control may be difficult, it’s certainly possible. It’s those difficult moments in the present that lead to the courage to accomplish the dreams we have for the future.