Born an overthinker, or wait shall I say raised an overthinker? I don’t know, man. But being a part-time ruminator means I spend long hours questioning my purpose. Especially about the things I should be doing and how I should be doing them. I like to think that like the average person, my existence is meaningful. It has to be, no? otherwise what is even the point? And I’m not saying this from a place of hero complex or because I think I am meant to save the world or bring world peace or anything lofty like that. I am saying this from a place of ordinary living day-to-day and how I think my being alive serves a secondary purpose outside of just breathing. I tend to think about this from an existential point of view where I believe it’s absolutely crucial for me to find my lifelong purpose before I get too old and it’s too late for me to do superwoman shit. Okay okay, you caught me, maybe somewhere in there, there is that bit of heroine complex (Loool that sounds so wrong for obvious reasons).
My point is I struggle with this conviction many times that I think I am supposed to be doing something important so much that I am paralyzed by that thought that I end up not even doing anything at all. I once read a book by Sylvia Plath titled The bell jar and I remember thinking about how much the character of that book resonated with how I felt sometimes and it was interesting when I eventually found out Sylvia had written that book based on her own personal life and whole time, she had mental illness! (well, to be fair, I think we all have some sort of mental illness at one point or another in our lives, it just depends on how open you are to healing, so there’s that)
This character in Sylvia’s book struggled mentally and a big part of her struggle was because she was overwhelmed from wanting to do everything so much that she was scared of doing the wrong thing or going the wrong path and missing out on the other paths she could have followed instead. She described her life as a fig tree with many branches stretching into different endeavours and instead of choosing one nice fig, she sat at the feet of this tree paralyzed, unable to decide which one to choose until each fig began to rot and fall on the ground because as constant as ever, nature always takes its course.
I have thought about that woman’s analogy more times than I can count and it’s just so profound the lesson it’s taught me about indecisiveness. I know we say life is short but I think it’s important to also acknowledge that life is long. Because that thinking, although liberating and has its use cases, is also very shrinking when you think about how it could potentially limit you from spreading your wings to try because you don’t want to mess up the one shot you think you will get at it. Life is long and isn’t meant to be one straightforward journey where everything just magically makes sense from day one.
For some reason, I am eager to reconcile with this feeling of “not knowing” I’ve held for so long. I am gradually understanding that it’s okay to not know how life will pan out because I’m not meant to know that. I know it’s heartbreaking but this isn’t a fantasy movie where the main character gets a mission and that’s all they do from start to finish. Plus the end of the movie isn’t usually the end of the hero’s journey and it’s so easy to forget that we are only watching a tiny part of it. I am presently embarking on a new journey and for the first time in my life, I am trying not to think of what comes after it. It’s my life but it’s also only a season of it and that, I choose to focus all my energy on.
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