I was always afraid of what the future holds for me and of what I will become in the years ahead. I grew up calculating the risks of my choices and swayed by the pressure and expectations placed on my shoulders.
Being a graduating student, there is uneasiness, moments of existential crisis, and along with this, is the peer and family’s expectations of me easily landing a good job because of my good grades and high level of academic achievements. Although it appears that I have a beautiful and brave excursion navigating my college days, it is still hard to convince myself that I am capable of living and surviving the complexity of the world beyond the four corners of the classroom.
Bearing the pressure and drowning with the idea of grind and hustle culture, it is debilitating that the public eye expects you to accomplish something great and exceptional at this pace. Locked up and caged with these overarching ideas, it appears that I am no longer a seeker of my own truth, but it seems that I am just playing the role of fraud and slave in the story of my own.
I came to acknowledge that I worry so much of my future that the people’s definition and same beliefs of success conferred upon me and I bear the pressure until it became destructive and the things that I do and I value no longer resonate and define myself. Hearing the words of Keating in the Dead Poets Society, “You must strive to find your own voice because the longer wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it all.” To reconnect and unravel the depth of my existence, I must seek and venture of finding the voice and true version of me.
It is true that I can choose to be anything I want or what others want me to be. I can be passionate and I can make my life extraordinary, but the thing is: I should grow into the version of my own and not let myself be only confined with the system’s beliefs on unending hustling and working too much for the future. With carpe diem, which is translated to “seize the day”, I always remind myself to also strive to savor the moments and value the present – to live and exist with a life I hoped and proud of, not what everyone else think it should be.
May we all embrace the personal freedom to choose and do anything we want and passionate about, to question and defy the conventional views, to have the courage in listening to our own voices, and to achieve all the dreams at our own different paces. To the ones reading this: The world is your oyster, carpe diem!
September 30, 2023
