Great expectations

defining the life to pursue

The story goes — I went to New York, and came back a different person. Something shifted in the core of my soul. A question kept popping up in my head, “who would I be if I lived and loved fearlessly?”

I came back with a sense of urgency, driven by a sense of mortality. I am beginning to truly comprehend that my time here is limited, and every current moment compounds to the future I have ahead of me. Every act I do, every decision I make, will matter in the course of my destiny.

Here’s the reality. Even if I lived to my life-expectancy of somewhere around the range of 70s — I am right smack in the middle of my entire life.

There is not much time left. I only have half of my life to go.

Another 30 years or so with the capacity to create, is being optimistic and generous. What if one day I wake up unable to use my hands anymore?

I want to do things that matter to me. Things that I deeply care about. And that may mean that I have to stop caring about other things. I think it is a tradeoff I am willing to make, that one day on my deathbed I know I have spent the second half of my life the way I deliberately want to. Even if it ends up in a series of failures defined by the rest of humankind, it would still be a life I lived. A life that is not being defined by society’s or anyone’s expectations of me. A life defined by the greatest expectations I would ever have in my life — mine.