stay lost as long as you can
I think for the longest time it was my goal to find myself, to figure out who I am and what my purpose in life is. But I started liking not knowing.
Why should I figure out who I am? It just takes away from my freedom.
All those years I tried to figure out who I am but lately, over the course of the last year, I started to change the goal. Instead of seeing who I am, I wanna meet as many versions of me as possible.
There are so many sides of me that I don´t know yet. For example, if I followed that path that my family wanted me to follow, I would be a teacher now. And I would´ve never known how good I am at traveling the world on my own. Because before I did it, I thought it´s something I could never do, I´m not the type of person for it and it´s gonna be nothing more than a dream of mine. Maybe in another life I could go out into the world. In this life, I´m too quiet, too introverted. Turns out I´m only too quiet around people I don´t feel good around. If I would´ve stayed in my hometown and went to Uni right after graduating High School, I would´ve never gone to Mexico, and Ireland, and India on my own. Those were places that deeply shaped me, revealing sides of myself I would´ve never met otherwise.
The person I am is a reflection of the people around me and my experiences. But if I change the experiences, maybe even a few people around me, wouldn´t that reveal a new version of myself? Maybe someone I like, maybe someone I don´t, either way it´s a good thing to meet new versions of myself.
I know the Universe is guiding me, I know there´s a plan that I don´t know about somewhere, and it´s gonna slowly reveal itself once I let go of all expectations.
This used to stress me out, but it´s actually a great chance. I have no idea what I´m doing with my life and that´s okay. It´s actually great. I also know I´d be so bored if I had my whole life path in front of me, even tho it´s what society wants me to - knowing what we want and to grow up as fast as possible. Going to Uni, get a good, society accepted job, marry, kids, house in the suburbs.
I found peace in not knowing. I don´t have to have it all figured out. Life can´t be planned anyways.
Instead of trying to figure out who I am, I´ll do my best to be present. Be content with what I have in the moment without always thinking about the future and making plans. I´m a lot happier and content with life when I let it all go. Being lost is a beautiful thing. I don´t have to have it figured out. How boring that would be.
I don´t know if my point came clear, I feel like this was a bit messy. But what I wanted to say is that seeing being lost as a chance instead of a burden changed my life. It took away all the pressure I felt from society to have it figured out, to have a life plan and to know what I want in life. When I´m lost, I don´t settle into the comfort of a version of myself I think is me. Things like “I can´t do that, it doesn´t fit me” won´t be said. Because I can do whatever I fucking want. Reinvent myself. Try and make mistakes and try again all over again. Because there is no settled version myself out there. Maybe there will never me a “final version” of me (I hope not!). There are so many versions of myself I´ve never met, and there will be so many times where I´ll surprise myself. I hope I´ll say “I didn´t even know I could do that” a thousand more times in life, the way I already said it a thousand times already. I might go out and try something completely new today.
(Update: I didn´t try something completely new that day, but I went to Ecstatic Dance for the first time in a very long time and remembered how much I loved it. And I thought about how when I was a teenager, I always wanted to be able to dance (not in my room, in public) but I thought I could never do that because people would think I´m weird. Today I don´t give a fuck.)
Little disclaimer:
I wrote this in September 2025 based on a journal entry I wrote in August 2024. Many things changed, the way that things change within a year. For the first time in my life, I have found a glimpse of what I would like my future to look like. But I won´t ever settle, I wanna continue to try new things, potentially meeting versions of myself I thought would never even exist. I chose to still write about this because this way of shifting my mindset really helped me in not feeling as lost, or like I´m behind in life when everyone around me seemed to have everything figured out. And I know so many people out there are feeling this way. As always, feel free to share your thoughts and experiences on this in the comments.
