For most of my teens I (21) had a broad but distinct vision for what I wanted my 20s to look like. It was everything I liked, I was looking forward to it, and was planning around it. Unfortunately it now seems that a central tenet of that vision will not be possible and I’m gonna have to rethink my 20s to suddenly look radically different (not sure how yet) to what I had come to anticipate. What’s more, some of the things outside of my influence that I was sorta expecting to have happened by now (first kiss etc) haven’t and I’ve found myself waiting around for them before I feel prepared to move on (they were part of the vision).
Unfortunately, since I had come to identify myself with and live in expectation of this path for my 20s, even when the central thing became impossible I tried to salvage the rest and make the side things still happen – which, as I have found, takes much more effort without that central thing tying them together. Since I’ve been planning around it for so long, I’ve sort of forgotten what alternatives there are so I don’t even know what else could be right for me (or how to find that out).
I think what makes it so hard to abandon the future I was expecting is that it gave me a sense of identity. This might also be because I didn’t like the life my parents had arranged for me during my teens. I’m afraid that if I try to go with the flow, embrace my actual (unhappy) reality and don’t try to correct my course to at least partially replicate the future that was supposed to happen, I would eventually become a different person, which discomforts me. It’s also the reason I’m afraid to try new things that could distract me from the (albeit now impossible) trajectory that I have come to identify with.
I guess this really leads me to ask what the bigger mistake that I’m making is. Why do I constantly need this future path/plan of experiences to guide me and give my life a feeling of meaning? How do I learn to let go and embrace whatever I’m served by life and live in the present without caring about where the path leads? I liked the feeling of certainty that having a (retrospective, almost?) vision of the future gave me but it made me a control freak.
TL;DR: I blindly made my life decisions based on a future path that is now long obsolete, but gave me a sense of identity and my life/struggle meaning. How can I let go of it so that I can embrace my actual situation and retain my identity whilst on a path that may end up looking completely different and unfamiliar?
I’m really, truly not trying to be flippant. But welcome to the first taste of adulthood. What you plan for your life and what your life becomes are very different things. I am not who I expected to be. I am not in the career I expected. I don’t have the same interests I expected, and I only have like 2 friendships from my high school days that I’ve really maintained.
But the thing is, none of that is necessarily bad. I enjoy my job, but as a high schooler “municipal development” wasn’t a career to dream about, even though it can be very satisfying.
I have different friends and interests, but they’re not worse. It’s just that the world broadens as you age.
You can’t really know who you are until the training wheels come off. That’s where you’re headed by the sound of it. Is it scary and stressful? Absolutely. But when you come out of it you’ll be the person you are, not the person somebody expects you to be.
The 20s were an amazing time where everything in my life got flipped around more than once. Now that I’m a few decades past it, I can better appreciate how much I grew in that time.
I also miss having a more cooperative body.
Planning is well and good but your present self should be driving towards your future, not the other way around which is how this kind of feels. In some ways it strike me that you seemed to see yourself as the future state person that you wanted to be rather than who you are. It may be worth taking a step back to try and rediscover who you really are “right now” as a person, not what you think or thought you wanted to be, if the plan has been in place that long you may find that at heart you just aren’t in the same headspace as the you from all those years ago. With that done, reassess what the current you wants and set out to “make” those things happen, don’t trust for the new plan to just natural play out, each thing should at least be treated like its going to take effort. If getting a family together is a thing and really important, don’t just hang out at bars waiting for a connection to happen. Get on apps and sites and date like it’s your 2nd job. Building on that as an example, if you’re a halfway decent person you will find somebody, but it might still be person 112 and you have to put in the work to get through the first 111 to get to them.
not the other way around which is how this kind of feels.
Agreed.
In some ways it strike me that you seemed to see yourself as the future state person that you wanted to be rather than who you are.
Yeah, that seems to be the way my brain has been hard-wired to look at it rn :-( I will try to take a step back and reassess. I just have to find a way to detach myself from whatever my future plan will be which is hard.
Something about your plans was very appealing to you. What about them gave you a sense of identity? Why those plans specifically? Try to figure that out: be very specific, write it down even, and discuss it with people. Once you figure out the driving force behind your plans, use that to guide you.
Hmm, good idea. In my case it was a career that would allow me to move back to my home country (which I had to leave when I was a child). I’ll have a think about alternative ways to reinforce the identity that this path gave me.
Plans never go the way you expect them too. Also, this is the most vague post I’ve ever seen in my life. You said a lot of words without really saying much.
It is incredibly odd…isn’t it? So many words saying very little.
To OP, I think it would help others to give you advice if you say exactly what sort of plans you had that didn’t work out. Plans not working out come in all shapes and sizes, and advice for one thing doesn’t necessarily apply to another.
If it’s a relationship you seem to desire, then asking for more relationship focused advice may be more fruitful than vaguebooking and not getting much in the way of useful responses.
Hmm, I suppose it is quite vague. I just thought the problem was quite generic (and so would be its solutions) and thought the specifics would be a distraction.
Plan as much as you want. Its nornal to feel uneasy about the unreliability of your plan. Dealing with uncertainty is difficult and many dont deal with it and spend life avoiding that feeling. Giving up on your plans is an option if you want.
Aim for your happy place of a neat and reliable plan. Handle failures to maintain your plan with grace and forgive yourself. Or get angry and double down on your efforts. Its all you friend. This is a life experience thing that comes to everyone who tries.
This happened to me. I got a PhD and expected to be able to get a tenure track job in academia. Sure, it’s hard. But it wouldn’t be me that failed at it, right? Wrong. Three years later, no job, scraping by on adjunct work.
I went back to law school. Sometimes you have to redefine your life in a way that gives you new opportunities. Does it still hurt that I couldn’t get my dream job? Yeah, but I have a lot of good I can do for the world in other ways, and I’m not going to let that dream’s death prevent me from doing it.
Some people learn about the limits of their control over events by meditating. Even when you stop trying to do anything, your body tries to do things and things change around you and you have the impulse to control things. Repeated exposure to this impulse eventually caused me to start laughing at how silly I was to assume that I was in control.
Maybe something like that could help you. Peace.
Get yourself a good therapist. It is their job to help you answer these kinds of questions yourself.
