We live life, every moment, every second, every day. We live our entire lives trying to understand who we are, who everyone else wants us to be, who we should be. We fall in love, we make friendships which we think will last forever, we make promises and then we break them. We try to make other people smile, so that at the end of the day, when we lay our heads on our pillows in absolute darkness, we can call ourselves good people.

We live life planning out our paths, our goals, our futures, our decisions. We think about when our first kiss will be, where we’ll go to college, when we’ll buy our first car. We tell ourselves that we’re on the right path, that we’re going to be okay in life. But do we even understand life if we’re so busy planning for tomorrow? We fantasize about what great things we will do in the future. We dream about how incredible the boy next door is, even though we’ve only talked to him once. We set high expectations for those around us and for ourselves. We lie and we lie and we lie until our hearts are pulling in a million different directions, our minds can’t tell wrong from right, and they certainly can’t distinguish right from what we wish was right. We bring ourselves to the point where we no longer know what path to choose because the one which was paved just a second ago is now infested by the opinions of our friends, our neighbors, our families. We bring ourselves to the point where we don’t want to choose a path because we are so afraid, so purely terrified that we are going to end up all alone. So, we turn our heads, look behind us, and watch where everyone else chooses to walk. We follow them because being alone would mean trusting our hearts, our minds, our souls all alone. We can pretend that we know ourselves, understand ourselves, trust ourselves. But, the truth is that most of us are scared to discover the part of ourselves which gets jealous, angry, emotional, sad. Well, maybe we don’t need to know those parts of ourselves. I mean, if our future paths are all set up, does it really matter? 

We think we’ve got it all figured out. But none of us truly stops to wonder: why am I looking for a path? Why am I squinting so hard to see some type of path which doesn't seem to exist? We’re too scared to leave it up to life to determine our paths. We’re scared to just let go of all the fantasies, the wishes, the plans, the things we were forced to believe about ourselves. The truth is, we’re human. Not one-of-a-kind special creatures, just human. We hurt, we get down on ourselves, and we don’t understand the things we do. We’re too afraid to admit it because we think we need a reason for why we feel a certain way, a piece of evidence to support our claim, a clear-cut explanation.

I know this might come as a shock, but you don’t need to know why you believe in something, or someone. You don’t need to know all the answers or which path is the right one for you. You just need to know that if it feels good in your heart, in your mind, in your soul, you should trust it. We’re going to keep looking for love, for acceptance, for happiness, for a future. But sometimes the best things we do in life aren’t meant to help us in the future, to bring us a forever friend, or to introduce us to someone who will always understand the way we feel. Sometimes the best things we do in life are the things we don’t expect to last, the things we do in the moment which just feel so good and so right in our hearts. If you truly know yourself, you won’t spend hours and hours planning out some long and elaborate future because you’ll trust yourself. Trust that somehow you’ll make it on your own, and maybe once we do that, we can truly live our lives.