What If We Took A Chance On Life

How about this… Just think about it…

Let’s just forget everything we once “thought” we wanted in life.

Do we even want those things anymore? We’ve been so disillusioned by this perpetual quarter-life crisis—living our days in constant disappointment because we are missing so many things from our “ideal life story.” So, why don’t we just let it go? Why don’t we erase all that, start completely over, and decide what we want now that we’re older, wiser and different? Why don’t we just say, “Fuck all this” and leave? Why don’t we resist all these stale ideas we’ve been pressuring ourselves with, and instead, go live a vivacious life as the boldest version of ourselves we have yet to discover?

I know it might feel like we’re too old—too old to let loose, give up our home, not have a plan, dare to reevaluate life without knowing how long it might take to find the answers we’re looking for. Where would we go? What would we do? We’ll only be older if and when we come back. And then what? Are we being irresponsible? Should we then stay? Live here with crossed fingers? Wait for life to happen to us?

We’ve been in this rut for so long, it seems, and yet there everyone else goes, their lives flourishing with big-time keywords—like baby and wedding and house and promotion! We are nowhere near those things. The idea of it makes us cringe, in fact. So why are we erasing ourselves to the mainstream when we don’t even believe in it, anyway?

If we don’t go now, we never will. And being in our heads is the sooo the wrong place for us, when we have the chance to be out in the world, instead. Everybody who won in life never played it safe. And that’s what we’re doing. Let’s challenge our minds! Scare ourselves witless. There is no wrong way. There is no right way, either. We’d be living a life that other people are too terrified to even imagine. And we don’t need much. It just seems like we do here, in this version of our lives. So, how about it? Let’s go…

We can live like hippies if we want to. Follow our favorite band cross country. Shotgun beers in the desert. Climb mountains and discover we’re scared of heights. Learn to surf. Swim in rivers that look like glass. We can fall in love with someone we’ll never see again. Get drunk with strangers. Sneak into music festivals. Ride on the back of a motorcycle and scream. We can discover the literary cities. Coffee culture. The south. Find a favorite piece of writing and memorize it until dawn. We can bathe in northeast oceans. Carve our names into tall trees. Sing songs around a campfire, tell stories, name stars. We can dance barefoot. Learn to play the banjo and realize we can’t. Read long books. Never worry about sunburns. We can write poetry about kissing and existentialism. Drink wine from the bottle. Cry for no reason and not feel sorry for it. We can rediscover Bob Dylan. Come up with theories. And when people ask us where it is we come from, and where it is we live, we can honestly say everywhere.

The money we have or don’t have will not define us. A corporate world is not our truth. Neither is reveling in things.

And as we rinse our souls of everything that once broke us, we will find ourselves again.

Maybe we’ll never end up married. Maybe we don’t believe anymore in having children. Maybe our idea of success has completely rewritten itself to something unimaginable. But isn’t that the point? To rediscover what we want and don’t want anymore? Let’s forget our age. Let’s live in the now. And instead of planning life so hard, let’s just go and live it.

Are you ready?