The world demands direction, which I am not yet prepared to take. 

The age when we begin to build a life is marked by uncertainty, fear, and a yearning for success without a sense of how to reach it. A time when one can feel forced to drop ‘unnecessary’ aspirations, choose a ladder, and start climbing. The urge for things to become more grounded arises, and it fights with the urge to create oneself. 

We begin to ask ourselves questions – should I sprint to catch up with life or pause to feel its passing? Can I really carve out the life I want? How do I hold on to the things that pique my interest and make me feel awake? We start to move quickly. Our actions become fast-paced efforts to create idealized futures and answers to our uncertainties before we even understand them.  

To make a life, the world demands direction and structure. But, our coming-of-age offers a moment of reckoning: the chance to break your own institutionalization. Choosing a creative life means choosing curiosity over certainty. It’s a chance to free ourselves from institutional frameworks –  be it school, career ladders, or picket-fence-fantasies. Still, untethering yourself leaves you raw. The absence of structure does not equal freedom, only space. You stand in it, bare, and are forced to tell yourself who you are. Without anchors, you must build yourself up. 

We are then faced with the job of weaving together what we’ve been told and what we hope for. What comes of this is unpredictable.

But in this game of becoming, in this handling of the tension between our roots and our wings, we must use uncertainty and fear as drivers. We must open our arms wide and wriggle them, testing the space around us. We must bend into unfamiliar shapes and meet with our own edges. We must sit on the frayed mattress, let its coils press into our backs, and feel the weight of choices not yet made.  We must feel lonely when we feel lonely. We are only half-formed. When you find that your home is deteriorating, play with it. Be curious about what you can make with what is left. Reveal yourself to yourself, without the crutch of expectation. Let the ruin teach you.