I almost always live in the present, but recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the future and what it could become. Older people usually tell me one of two things: that I should take advantage of my age to have fun, or that I should work as hard as possible now to be at ease later. Two completely opposite poles, it’s like having an angel on one shoulder and a demon on the other.
For my future, the thing that excites me the most is the plan I have with my best friend to travel for months to another continent, something that would only happen in a movie. If there's one thing I think about every single day, it’s that trip. I can’t put into words how excited I am about it.
At the same time, someone on one of my shoulders tells me I should instead focus on securing my future as soon as possible. Not everyone is lucky enough to have a university degree they can make use of, but that only makes me picture a life that’s not worth living. The universe is too big to be thinking about who to work for.
I think that trip is the definition of truly living, with happiness, fear, sadness, adrenaline, nervousness, doubts; meeting new people, seeing new places, experiencing new cultures, trying new food, creating memories, taking videos and photos for a documentary, among a countless number of things I can't even imagine yet. Living life the way I now want, connected to reality.
On the other hand, I do care about what the people closest to me think. If something goes wrong, I’d feel sad knowing they’d say, “I told you It wasn’t a good decision!” or that some people would feel disappointed instead of supporting my path after all.
The truth is, right now I value experiencing new things more, maybe I’m blinded by excitement and it's not letting me see the consequences. Still, I believe in destiny, and that whatever is meant to happen will happen. Even so, I’d love to receive a letter from my future self to feel at ease.
Coming back to older people, none of those who support the trip have ever lived an experience like the one I’m planning. They just wish they had done it at my age. I think that’s an important detail. One way or another, the decision has been taken. If I don’t take the trip, I’m sure my future self will be wondering every single day if it was the right choice.
As absurd as it might sound coming from me, I feel that we all have the obligation to explore the world, to get to know all the cultures we can and as many people as possible. I’ve learned over the years that what happens online isn’t real, ironically. Connecting with what’s around me is far more fulfilling than anything that can happen online. I want to force myself to get out of my bubble and live a different kind of life for a few months, away from the internet and my home. It’s a topic I will write about in a future blog very soon!
I want to read this in the future and laugh at all the worries I have today, that everything turned out the way it was meant to, and that I even got to take more trips. If it all went wrong, this page probably went down because I ran out of money.