I often reflect on the film American Beauty, and how right at the very end I’m faced with the death of a protagonist that I related with not because he was perfect by any means, but because he was struggling to find himself in the things he did but clearly did not enjoy.
I’m asking myself what if the world ended now mostly because I’ve been sick, and in the time I’ve been sick despite how nonlethal the whole situation was I did sit there for a moment and thought how quickly life could end.
If my life ended right now would I be happy with my place of death? The person I was interacting with or the very thing I might have been doing at that moment?
This is the reason why no matter how hard I’ve tried to settle for the “Right Career”, the path that pays the hills or the status that warrants everybody’s respect, I have always found myself feeling plagued by the sense that I’m wasting my time.
I say this because if I died right now, most of my life would have been dedicated to somebody else’s idea of what it means to be alive.
It really is that scary, but it’s also that simple; simple enough for me to look in the mirror and tell myself that I deserve to be selfish.
It becomes easier to ignore the pessimists when I realise just how important it is for me to be me for my own sake. I’m learning to accept that living for me is gonna p**s people off because that’s now how they’ve been taught to live their lives, but at the same time I cannot waste this unique chance at living a meaningful life for the sake of somebody else’s opinion.
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