Note To My Future Self
The last time I gave a somewhat formal speech was for my high school graduation ceremony. Let me remind you what I talked about then. I mentioned how important it was to learn to live in the moment, and not be too worried about the future. We can’t live every stage of our lives thinking about the next one; instead, we should focus on living in the moment. This is not an excuse to live a crazy life with no limits, please don’t misinterpret my proposal. As persons, we should be happy with where we are (in the present), do the things we need to do now and fix the problems we have today. We should live one day at a time, enjoying each and every moment fully, with the friends, family and people we have around us.
Those were my thoughts as a high school senior. After four years in college, and having graduated just a few months ago, my perception has changed a bit. I have realized that although we need to learn how to enjoy the moment, this does not mean we should disregard our future by not taking advantage of the opportunities that come our way.
Right now, one of my only (and probably greatest) fears is not achieving my full potential. Talking with my younger brother almost a year ago, we concluded that the notion of “not reaching our potential” is meant more in the sense of wasting the opportunities that are in front of us now, rather than feeling we are fated for some pre-destined future. I don’t think destiny is going to put everyone in its place, or that everything happens for a reason, or that our lives have already been written before we’ve lived them. People get to where they want to be not because they were destined for that situation, but because they knew how to take advantage of the opportunities they had in front of them at the moment; these opportunities might come in the form of job offers, projects , relationships, among others.
However, it’s also not about accepting every single opportunity that comes our way because then we can fall victims to conformity and think that because we already have something in front of us, it’s not worth improving it or worth pursuing something better. We shouldn’t stay at a job we don’t enjoy or stay in a relationship that isn’t right just because it’s easy to do so. It is imperative to keep an eye out of all new opportunities, but we should also be vigilant and keep on searching for those which can really make us happy or fulfill us.
Another point I wanted to touch up on is from an article I read last semester that I enjoyed a lot. The article is titled “In Defense of Being Average,” written by this guy called Mark Manson. While I don’t particularly like the way he writes, he has some interesting thoughts (http://markmanson.net/being-average). To summarize, he argues that becoming or being an “average” person should not be considered something negative or the end of the world. If your aim in life is to be an average person, that’s bad, but if that’s the result of your life, you shouldn’t see that as failure. In the article, Manson talks about a bell curve that looks like a Gaussian Distribution (a very common continuous probability distribution). Most of the 7.4 billion people that inhabit planet Earth are “normal” (i.e. they lie in the middle portion of a bell curve). Think about it — how many people can actually be influencing the world in a substantial way at any given moment in history? Let’s be generous and say around 100,000 people. That’s around 0.00135% of the population, which is next to nothing.
Yes, we should think big and aspire for great things, but we can’t beat ourselves up if these things don’t come to pass. As the author says, the famous phrase “we can all be extraordinary if we really put our mind and heart to it” is essentially a self-imposed delusion. We have to be grounded and realize that most of us won’t reach those levels. Despite this realization, we can’t aspire to be average and, most importantly, we shouldn’t be mediocre.
Back to my two main points: learning to live in the moment, but also to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to us. The most basic things in our lives can seem very boring, but we need learn how to appreciate them: friendships, helping others, reading a book, watching a good film (or even a bad one!).
Never stop trying to be a better version of yourselves. Don’t use the article I mentioned above as an excuse to justify mediocrity and for when things don’t go your way, but also don’t go crazy if you don’t become the next Mark Zuckerberg. Find a balance. Learning to enjoy everyday things will make you a more complete and happy person. Knowing that you want to improve and always striving to do so without comparing yourself to others is what will really help you live a life worth living. These types of thoughts are some of the few that have given me sleepless nights. They scare me because one of my ambitions in life is to be able to transform the lives of a great number of people, but I know this is an extremely difficult task. I constantly scare that I won’t reach my potential, take advantage of the opportunities that may arise, or continually enjoy the things I already have.
However, while I do scare, I’m also optimistic this won’t be the case. In the meantime, I plan to enjoy the ride.
Written by Jaime Castro, a Legaats community member.
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