I'm scared

Life scares me.

Not in the way you think though.

I love life. I love my life. Life so far, for me, has been amazing. And I know that in the few years I've lived here, I am barely scratching the surface of the numerous things I can do or the multiple things I can achieve.

But lately, I have been scared. What scares me? Mediocrity.

For some people, life is really simple. Go to school, get a degree. Get a job, doesn't matter whether you like it or not; and work at that job till you retire, or die. Find a partner and build a family if that's more your speed, and then…. just exist. Do the same thing over and over until you can't do it anymore.

Sounds safe, true. But is it really life?

I have seen people that work literally every day, Sunday to Saturday. It doesn't look like they're happy with what they do. And they just…exist. They do not live. They don't experience the beauty that is life. Initially, it annoyed me because I felt like they did too much; but now, all I feel is sadness. Sadness because I was this close to becoming as unfulfilled as them; and sadness because they still don't realize that there's more to life than the mundane and the routine.

I don't want to wake up one day some fifty years later and discover I was the girl who was so caught up in routine that she forgot to live her life. I don't want to be the person that masks her unhappiness in people pleasing and performative actions. I don't want to be that person that doesn't have a life that is wildly exhilarating and beautiful. I want to live. Fully, wholeheartedly and completely.

And I am scared. Scared that routine will dull out my life. Scared that I would be the one that doesn't dare anymore, or even dream anymore. Scared that my life will be a cacophony of “could've, should've and would've s”.

So I will take that fear, and let it drive me. Let it spur me into action. You can say fear is a terrible driving force but acceleration is better than stagnation. I will LIVE. I will love. I will be happy. I will make the most of my life. God forbid I limit myself to one thing. I am an infinite personality of possibilities. I will do the things that scare me. I will live a multifaceted, multipassionate, multidisciplinary life. I will be a jack of all trades and master of all. And when I am done living this life, it will be said of me: “she was scared, but she did it anyway”. And I will, absolutely not, be the person that is so swamped with activities that I forget to have a life.

And let the church say? Amen.