Great Expectations of Everyday People
Do you believe you should be feeling happy?
When I was in my twenties, I was fairly lost and confused. I had grown up with that feeling that everyone else knew things that I didn’t and had it all together. At twenty-four I quit drinking and my life changed, dramatically. But this is not an article about drinking or sobriety. For the next few years, I began to mature and learn about myself and the world I lived in. I found a career I loved. I had friends. I discovered who I actually was and that most people, especially those in their twenties, do not have their shit together so completely. I did not miss out on any manual that was passed out in homeroom on the day I was late.
A therapist once said to me, “Life is much more ambiguous than you realize.” I had been bemoaning the fact that I never had a plan for life, that my messed up parents had not taught me anything important and that I was simply tossing about on the sea of life. She asked me what I meant by a plan. I described people I had known in college who had always known they would go to college, mom and dad paid for it, knew what they would major in and what job they wanted after, and got the car for graduation and the job, and went off happily living life. Meanwhile, college was never mentioned in my family. My mother wanted me to marry a doctor or engineer. My father just wanted me to “get a…
