For most of my teens I (21) had a broad but distinct vision for what I wanted my 20s to look like. It was everything I liked, I was looking forward to it, and was planning around it. Unfortunately it now seems that a central tenet of that vision will not be possible and I’m gonna have to rethink my 20s to suddenly look radically different (not sure how yet) to what I had come to anticipate. What’s more, some of the things outside of my influence that I was sorta expecting to have happened by now (first kiss etc) haven’t and I’ve found myself waiting around for them before I feel prepared to move on (they were part of the vision).
Unfortunately, since I had come to identify myself with and live in expectation of this path for my 20s, even when the central thing became impossible I tried to salvage the rest and make the side things still happen – which, as I have found, takes much more effort without that central thing tying them together. Since I’ve been planning around it for so long, I’ve sort of forgotten what alternatives there are so I don’t even know what else could be right for me (or how to find that out).
I think what makes it so hard to abandon the future I was expecting is that it gave me a sense of identity. This might also be because I didn’t like the life my parents had arranged for me during my teens. I’m afraid that if I try to go with the flow, embrace my actual (unhappy) reality and don’t try to correct my course to at least partially replicate the future that was supposed to happen, I would eventually become a different person, which discomforts me. It’s also the reason I’m afraid to try new things that could distract me from the (albeit now impossible) trajectory that I have come to identify with.
I guess this really leads me to ask what the bigger mistake that I’m making is. Why do I constantly need this future path/plan of experiences to guide me and give my life a feeling of meaning? How do I learn to let go and embrace whatever I’m served by life and live in the present without caring about where the path leads? I liked the feeling of certainty that having a (retrospective, almost?) vision of the future gave me but it made me a control freak.
TL;DR: I blindly made my life decisions based on a future path that is now long obsolete, but gave me a sense of identity and my life/struggle meaning. How can I let go of it so that I can embrace my actual situation and retain my identity whilst on a path that may end up looking completely different and unfamiliar?
Wow, why is it so hard for you to say what the problem is? It’s going to be a bit hard to get any advice.
I assume you wanted children but are sterile? You can still adopt. Even if that’s not what you mean, there are always alternatives in some way that let you achieve what you want, maybe not exactly like you imagined it, but a similar thing.
Everyone else already has said the “general” stuff that can be said without getting any more information from you. If you really want help, you should be ready to share some more information and answer questions people have, as well as answer people’s comments with sharing your true thoughts, not holding back like you did in your main post.
In the end, how do you get over this? You understand rationally that you can never plan the future 100%. You understand that once people achieve a goal/plan, they don’t become happy, they just try to achieve a new goal/plan. To become happy, you have to be happy with what you currently have, no matter what that is.
You don’t have to have an identity to live. Identity is irrelevant. It’s a thought-up human concept that in the grand scheme of things has no meaning. What does it matter what your identity was 100 years from now? 1000 years from now? A million years from now?
And once you rationally understand these things, you have to convince your subconscious of them as well, which is much harder and requires lots of practice.
It could be a career, or religion. For me I was planning to become a pastor, but then became an atheist. It really did throw me off. In my case I think I’m much happier than I would have been, but do kick myself because I could have been positioned much better if I wasn’t making plans in this other direction.
Yes, it was a career with moving back to my home country (which I had to leave when I was a child) attached to it.
Adopting kids ain’t easy. People always say “you could just adopt” but they don’t realize just how much expense is involved. It could easily cost $50k.
Thank you, this reply helps. You’re right, my post was quite vague, and I didn’t want children or found I was sterile, but the advice given to those people would actually perfectly fit my (completely different) situation too.