19 Oct 2017

We are pushing ourselves for the highest marks, to get into the most prestigious uni, to do the hardest degree. We burn ourselves up, pushing through sleepless nights and caffeine fuelled days until we can reach the finish line. We hear our parents telling us that they want what’s best, for us to go to university and get an education and a solid career path and we believe them.

We believe our teachers when they tell us there is one pathway to success; that we need to follow a step-by-step guide to reach the top. But we go home, lay on our beds and wonder if there is more. If there’s more than just joining the dots and hoping that eventually, a completed picture will turn out. If there’s more than putting out heads down and trudging through the good and the bad, doing what we should be doing; finishing our homework and waking up early, day in and day out.

When we were kids we just did what we liked. We would watch TV or run outside or draw for hours without thinking about it. There was no question of whether this was what we should be doing- we liked it and so we just did it.

Somewhere along the way, in the process of growing up, we forgot what it was like to do something just because we wanted to. We put our minds to our work, to the exams and assessments that were suddenly inescapable. We poured our energy into plowing through our to-do lists that seemed to never end- always something else to do, always something that needed to be added to the list. So that even when we trudged home from school, threw our bag on the floor and flopped on the bed there was still the feeling of dread that we should be doing something. Never mind the fact that we could barely keep our eyes open, or that we had spent all day thinking about the moment when we could just lay down and breathe for a second.

But please, don’t waste your energy on a life you don’t want.

If you don’t want to go to university, don’t spend your energy on your ATAR. Look for other pathways and find real world experiences that exist outside a classroom. If you don’t want to work in your retail job for the rest of your life don’t waste every hour behind a register. Work on your resume, apply for new places, face rejection and push through. If you don’t want to spend every weekend at home in the dark watching Netflix don’t stay in bed all day. Get outside, go for a drive and blast your music. Find look outs and walking trails, spend all day in the sun and come home with a new splash of freckles across your nose. If you want to write or paint or act or sing or read- f*cking do it. If that’s what you enjoy make time for it. And if you can’t find the time then you obviously don’t want it enough.

At the end of the day it’s your life. And you’re the only one that can change it. Catch a flight, change courses, try something new. Do something because you want to do it not because you feel like you need to. Cut your hair, start going to the gym, head to bed early and wake up with the sunrise. Think of the person you wish you could be and invest your energy into becoming that.

You will get side-tracked. You will listen to what other people want you to be or do. You might enrol in a degree that you don’t enjoy or push through a job that makes you hate yourself. That’s okay, sometimes it’s easier to go with the flow and the thought of fighting against what people are expecting of you is hard. It can be exhausting and draining and some days you will want to forget about everything and just sleep until it blows over.

But remember that you have the power. You are the one who will have to live with your decisions fifty years down the track. It’s a cliche because it’s true- it’s the things you don’t do that you’ll regret the most.