The Paradox of Wanting To Do Everything

By Paige Auxier

Edited by Taylor Morgan

SELDA / @10sna on Pinterest

Next month, I will officially enter my early twenties and will thus be leaving my adolescence behind. I have thought a lot about this transition, and, in doing so, I have determined that I regard the prospect of growing up with a jumbled sense of dread, apprehension, hope and overwhelming excitement. I have also realized, though, that a large part of the nerves I feel in regard to moving past my teen years are born from the immense pressure I feel to make the most of the pinnacle phase of life I am now entering, during which I am expected to grow, develop, discover who I am, see the world, meet new people, try new things, find and fulfill my passions and place myself on a path towards future success. There is an air of limitless potential surrounding one’s early twenties; however, with limitless possibilities comes a lack of concrete direction, more opportunity for failure and an overwhelming sense of uncertainty, which, at least in my case, serves as a source of unease. Alongside this, too, I feel as though I have already missed the mark in some ways and have, in turn, prematurely rendered a handful of experiences in adulthood permanently out of reach.   

I have begun to suspect that this feeling is closely related to my unwavering, and undoubtedly unrealistic desire to take advantage of all life has to offer, which reminds me of a specific passage from Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar.”

The excerpt is as follows: 

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

I am, like Esther Greenwood—the novel’s main character—a college-aged young woman who is struggling to decide what to do with her life. Upon considering my limitless options, I’m abruptly disheartened by the realization that the selection of one path requires that I abandon other equally appealing alternatives. I cannot be everyone, everywhere and everything all at once, which is painful to recognize and even more difficult to accept. I will argue, too, that selecting a path of trajectory for one’s life is more difficult now than it ever has been, considering how consistently we are exposed to glimpses of overly idealized and meticulously curated portraits of others’ lived experiences through social media. And since the versions of life we perceive are mere fragments of, or perhaps even utterly fabricated versions of reality, we are, in turn, at liberty to fill in the gaps left in our understanding with our own personal fantasies, thus making the already idealistic lives of others even more unattainable and appealing. Through comparison, we then grow dissatisfied with who we are and develop an increased feeling of pressure to do more and be more than we ever could be. These expectations are not specific either, as they are based on a jumbled plethora of half-truths about the lives of people whom we never have and never will meet. This often serves to leave us stumped about where to begin in the process of achieving our goals and developing into the most idealized versions of ourselves, because we are attempting to become a million and one other people.  

In my head, I have created endless to-do lists, teeming with activities to try, music to listen to, outfits to wear, books to read, movies to watch and things to think about. I have mapped out changes I would like to make to my personality and appearance. Sometimes it almost seems as though I am attempting to alter every element of myself. As if rather than building upon who I already am, I wish to demolish every element of my current self in exchange for a new and improved identity that coincides with an elaborate fantasy I have fabricated. Often, though, these towering lists are counterproductive to my purpose, as upon regarding them, I often wind up paralyzed by my own lofty expectations, and, in turn, wind up doing nothing at all. And this shameful desire to commit to inactivity is so readily permitted, as I have, at all times, unlimited access to mindless forms of leisure that allow me to numb my thoughts rather than embrace the hard challenge of considering and developing them. To scroll, for me, is to escape the task of deciding what to do. So, how do I stop this? How do I, and anyone else struggling in the same ways, jumpstart the act of doing?

Perhaps the first step is to distance ourselves from our expectations. I have realized, upon considering the unrealistic standards I have set for myself, how large a role privilege has played in setting them. Everything is available to me, and I am lucky that, regardless of what path I choose, I will be supported, which I imagine is similar to the experiences of several of my peers here at Miami, considering that we are all privileged enough to receive a college education. With such a broad scope of possibilities, though, comes more depth to the decisions we have to make regarding the course of life we wish to follow. So, for those, like myself, with virtually everything within our reach, how do we select the right path? 

Nowadays, there’s so much emphasis on change and rebranding, but what about the virtue of staying the same? This is not to say, of course, that I am anti-self-improvement, but perhaps, through placing too much emphasis on abandoning elements of our past selves, we fall out of touch with who we are, and, in turn, lose sight of what we truly want out of life. So, perhaps the path to achieving a life you find fulfilling begins with accepting yourself, as who you are encompasses all that you value, have a passion for or are talented at. I think, too, that the process of determining who you really are and what it is you truly want requires you to reflect on past versions of yourself. In this reflective process, we should ask ourselves what our childhood selves used to enjoy doing, what tasks we gravitated towards and what made us tick. I think, in doing this, we all might realize that a lot of those things, despite the passage of time, have and will continue to remain the same. Then, with those answers as our framework, we can broaden the scope of our questioning to encompass things such as what we as individuals want to learn more about. What kinds of knowledge would fulfill and interest us? What do we wish to bring to conversations? What activities might we find meaningful? By being conscious in answering these questions with our personal passions in mind, our actions in response to them will be more self-motivated, as they are born from genuine interest. And this is perhaps the most key element of making your early twenties worthwhile, as they are just as much about authentic self-discovery as they are about having experiences and taking action. Through self-discovery, we can make more educated decisions about what experiences we will find worthwhile and, in turn, make the most of our time. 

Alongside this, I think we must also be willing to give ourselves grace. I personally have a deep fear of failure and embarrassment. I am not sure when or where this developed, but I seem to feel as though when I approach doing anything new, there’s an expectation that I have some sort of natural talent for the task. So, in instances where I feel as though I might lack natural skill or that there’s a likelihood of my facing failure, I avoid doing it altogether. In doing this, though, I’m ultimately barring myself from having several experiences. So, for anyone like me who struggles with this, perhaps a key step to taking action is starting the process of abandoning this expectation and accepting that there’s a learning curve to all things.

I think it could also be helpful to be willing to take things one step at a time. Perhaps the secret to making your twenties worthwhile is relinquishing the notion that the clock is winding down and that you are already behind. Instead, we should rather enter with a sense that we have time and are free to choose how we spend it, that our lives are our own, that we can take breaks when we need them and that we do not have to have it all figured out. We still have endless opportunities to grow, try new hobbies, read new books, listen to new albums; there’s no deadline for growth, as life is a grueling and ongoing process. So in that sense, our lives are not expiring; they are only just beginning.