It’s hard not to feel like your problems are the center and end of the universe. A bad grade, something totally weird you said last night, uncertainties about the future…the list goes on and on. I often find myself rotting in bed feeling sorry for myself on an especially hectic week, with a complete victim mentality. But then, sometimes, life forces me to zoom out. To see my life and this world as something much bigger than whatever hole I had begun to bury myself in.
The Universe is Vast—And That’s a Good Thing
When I step outside, and look up at the endless lightyears of space above, I feel small.Â
Feeling small doesn’t make me feel insignificant, it makes me feel relief. When we realize how big the world is, and how vast of a life we have yet to live, problems turn from mountains to stepping stones. It’s like standing at the edge of the ocean. The waves have been crashing for millennia before us, and they will continue long after. Our worries, no matter how overwhelming in the moment, are just ripples in a much larger current.
Time heals all
Consider what your biggest stressor was around this time last year. Do you even remember? If so, does that very thing still make you feel as upset as it used to? I bet your perspective on that particular event has shifted in the time since. Do your best going forward to consider roadblocks as simply lessons learned. The beauty of perspective is that it allows us to recognize this in real-time rather than only in hindsight. When faced with stress or uncertainty, we can remind ourselves: This too shall pass.
Everyone is just figuring it out
Another powerful piece of the puzzle is realizing how universal of an experience it is to overthink and over analyze something that simply isnt worth the hassle. Even the girl giving absolute clean girl in your 9am lab probably just recently had a breakdown over something as small as sending the wrong emoji in a text or mispronouncing a word in class. We all do it. We all spiral over things that, in the grand scheme of things, don’t really matter.Â
College feels like a pressure cooker. Everyone is constantly planning for their future, accomplishing things that make us wonder, “Am I supposed to be doing that?”. It’s easy to fall into pattern of comparison, convinced we are behind and everyone else has got it figured out completely. Heres the truth: pretty much everyone is winging it, just like us! Some people are just better at making it look easy.Â
freedom in letting go
In the grand scheme of things, we are all here for the same reasons, all just human beings trying to figure it out. So dont tell yourself what youre feeling is “lost” or “overwhelemed’. Remind yourself of what this really is: freedom. Freedom to not have everything figured out yet. Freedom to make mistakes and learn from them. Freedom to pivot when things don’t go as you had planned. Maybe that freedom comes from realizing we dont have to carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. Maybe being small isn’t something to fear, but something to embrace. Because when we realize we’re just a tiny part of something infinite, our worries shrink too—and what’s left is the freedom to simply be. So take a deep breath. Step outside. Look up at the sky or out at the horizon and remind yourself: there is so much more ahead. And in the meantime, you don’t have to have all the answers. You just have to keep going.
