Newton’s First Law of Motion: An object in motion stays in motion. That’s all life seems to be. From the moment of birth, we, as a species, are constantly moving. Pre-school, elementary school, middle school, high school, graduation, college, grad school, jobs, buying a house, growing relationships, starting a family. Creating a successful life story, one that your parents are proud to share at the dinner table over the holidays, is all that we as a society have wrapped ourselves up to be. Uncertainty and doubt are things that should be swept under the carpet; you just have to “fake it until you make it.”
Time is of the essence. You have to figure everything out in the perfect order, at the perfect time, in order to live happily and successfully. If you don’t, your time will run out! And what will you do then? How will you survive in a world with no time left to figure out what you’re going to do? But since when did not having time left, or not having a definitive next step in life, become such a bad thing? Why have we created a society where the object in motion has to stay in motion? Why can’t it stop? Why can’t it rest? Why can’t it be uncertain?
My future is this object. I’m finishing up my junior year as a psychology major, and I have no idea what I want to do next. For most psych professions, you have to go to grad school to get a well-paying job, but it just means more time and more money spent on education. Part of me wants to stay on this path because it gives me a sense of security. I’ve always gone to school. I’ve been in some educational system or other since I was three years old, and continuing on to grad school will tack on another two or three years of something I’m familiar with. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that it would help my career in the long run. But there’s part of me now that’s over the stress and the expectations of following this path. I’m not even sure anymore if I want to be a psychologist! Sometimes I get this overwhelming feeling where I don’t even want to do anything at all!
I get anxious knowing that I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do in the next year after I’ve graduated. I don’t know what I want to be doing in the next 20 years. I look all around me and I see classmates and friends who have drawn out a plan, who have work interviews or internship experiences lined up. Friends who want to go to grad school and want to study clinical or behavioral psychology. To be honest, I don’t care. I don’t know. Will I end up back home with my parents after I graduate? I’d give it a 95% chance. But that’s okay, I don’t have to land feet first out into society; I’m allowed to stumble and fall, and believe it or not, completely stop the object in motion.
As of now, I must let time take its course. I can only do so much. I will not let the ongoing societal motion sweep me away from my uncertainty. Sure, it makes me uncomfortable not knowing, but I will use this opportunity to push me further into the unknown, to discover what is out there in a world where everything has stopped and there’s no pressure to keep moving.
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