Wading Through Choice

I think it is good to clarify what is meant exactly by the phrase “let go of the outcome”.  At this stage in our lives, so many young adults are feeling almost exactly the same.  It is as if we have been taken on a sheltered boat, our childhood, out into the middle of the ocean of possibility.  And now, it is time to begin swimming for ourselves.  But none of us can see what land, what destination is in any direction.  All there is to see is the horizon, the future hidden by the slow curve of time and space.  We have been told our whole lives that we can be and do anything.  But it is becoming clearer and clearer that we certainly cannot be and do everything.  We have spent our entire childhoods dreaming of so many different paths our future could take, envisioned ourselves doing as many things as we could. 

All of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of the ocean, and it’s time to choose a direction to start swimming.  We know that our energy and time is not exhaustive, and in many ways once we start swimming one way we greatly decrease the realm of possibilities we will be able to swim long enough to reach.  There is only so many landmasses we can reach, so many times we can reenter the water and toss ourselves into the wide sea of possibility.  Every time we set out for something new, we have that much less energy, that much less time, and the likelihood of floundering before reaching our destination grows that much greater.

So here we are, young adults with the chance to pick a direction for our lives like we will never have again.  The fear of killing the dream of so many visions we have had of ourselves is almost paralyzing.  How are we supposed to move, with so much riding on the direction we choose and no certainty of the outcome of that choice?    I think that this worry originates from thoughts on what our life’s work will be, but I think that it extends to everything else as well.  Depression becomes so prevalent in young adults because I think we see the death of who we dreamt we’d be in every step we take.  We begin to see a disconnect between who we had wished to be, what we wished to embody, and the truth of who we are at the moment.

It is so easy to resign ourselves to becoming this sad shadow of the self we had wished to be because we have already begun to move in another direction.  How are we supposed to turn back now?  That will only make us even more lost than we already are and there is no guarantee of finding the self that we had hoped to find.  So when things are not going the way we wished in our relationships, or in school, or in our friendships, or with our body, or so many other things, it is easy to give into defeatism due to the enormous effect this time of our lives has on our future selves.  It was a game that was designed to see us lose, and part of us is willing to accept defeat if only to prove that we were right to think the odds unfair.

Letting go of the outcome is not to say that you don’t work towards any outcome. You work to put yourself in a position to achieve whatever future it is you think you may want, but you must become willing to accept however it turns out in reality.  You have to be willing to cast yourself into uncertainty as many times as is necessary to arrive at a place that provides you with happiness.  I think that one thing that has really helped me personally begin the process of letting go of outcome is to envision myself as the mover rather than the reactor.  If I am being who I want to be, and divorce myself from the outcome of what that means to everything around me, then I begin to shape my world and my moment to be as I want it to be.  That way, whatever direction I am swimming, I am creating an oasis wherever I am.  Every moment becomes a destination that I am happy to be at.  I’ll have to explain how this works the next time I have the time to sit and articulate it.