The Slacker’s Guide to Lofty Expectations

I was at the supermarket the other day when I mistakenly bumped into an older lady while waiting in line at the counter. One thing led to another, and soon we had indulged in a full-fledged conversation. We talked about the weather, traffic, our respective jobs, and plans for the upcoming holidays. In the middle of paying her total bill, she turned around and asked me with a smile if I minded telling her my age. I obliged and told her that I was 23.

‘Oh! That’s wonderful. I’m pretty sure you are enjoying your life to the fullest right now! Makes me so jealous!’ A warm smile and a wave later, she was gone from the store with a hopeful message of seeing me around.

I was a little irked. Why was it supposed to be wonderful? What exactly about being in this age is supposed to be great? The fact that I have a longer life in front of me? Or the fact that being younger somehow made me available to more opportunities in life?

But why doesn’t anyone see the anxiety I get when I think these same things? That the ‘plenty of time’ in my hands makes me worried about the innumerable choices that lie in front of me? Wherever I go, people older than me tell me how envious they are of my young age. It leaves me feeling baffled. How does one tell them how tough it is when you are without direction at a certain point in time? How it leaves you feeling helpless to see others leap away when you don’t even know how to start, at the first place?

Why does nobody see the suffering that I go through? The expectations that I am subjected to, because I am ‘young’? Why does nobody see the race that I run with myself and fail miserably? The misery, the tears, and the anxiety vanish when subjected to such comments because all people see is the veil of radiant youth. Nobody sees beyond the sparkling smiles, glittery eyes, and glimmering complexion into the dark well of worries, empty roads of doubt, and scary nightmares of anxiety.

Sometimes I feel that it’s a curse. They say time is a precious commodity, but nobody told me that too much of it will only end up bruising my shoulders that carry its weight. To be the sole owner of such a huge number of expectations and hopes has become tiring now. My life was supposed to be a play performed on stage, but nobody warned me that the audience would be so strict, one that would disintegrate and call out each wrong step and flawed expression.

I can’t be a perfect performer, nor do I want to make the effort of being a flawless executant to please the whims of a few. I just want to live, WITHOUT worries that gnaw at me from each direction. I just want to breathe and exist, do the work that I am supposed to do, and subsequently seep away into the peaceful oblivion of nothingness and contentedness. May God bless me with the power to accomplish this, and be the jack in MY eyes in the play of life.