Decisions Decisions

I was recently inspired and challenged to write a short piece on-the-whim with no real intent, bur rather to write and see where it took me. Here is what I came up with, a short piece on a youthful man contemplating the options of his future. Thanks for the inspiration. :)


His life was in the quintessential limbo that so many of our generation experience at the conclusion of college. Where would the road lead next? Uncertainty had become a nagging whisper in his ear, and while seeking stability in a time when it was far and few between, that nagging became at least a sliver of comfort. One thing that he still had in his favor were options. His education and careful planning allotted him the freedom to explore many different careers for as long or short as he so desired. Sure, he had friends who would walk out of college making 100k a year. Would they be happy? Perhaps. 


That kind of security wasn't worth the risk of a mundane life to him, though. Some would consider him a free-spirit. Not looking to be tied to one job or location for too long. The world is far too vast a place to be limited to a handful of square miles, and to live and conclude life without experiencing as much as humanly possible seemed an outrageous notion. At the same time though, there was always the lingering fear in the back of his mind that he'd end up alone. A man with all the stories in the world to tell, with distant friends scattered to all corners of the globe, yet have no family to show for it; nobody to come home to and share all of the highs and lows of these trips. It seemed as though there had never been more binary a decision in life. It would be most selfish to blend the two, living a life where he asked his family to uproot themselves for his own benefit. At the same time, he would be doing himself a disservice to not go out and live.


Fortunately, there was still time to make those decisions. Nobody was holding a gun to his head, and even if they were, he'd have a lot to show for the life he'd lived thus far. Nothing ahead of us is guaranteed, meaning the importance drawn from these irrational thoughts of tomorrow is that the only way to live is in the now. No need to dwell on the past, nor hypothesize about a future which has not yet happened. The only thing that he can count on right now is being here in the now, experiencing the kind of life he loves, perhaps with her.