“I know exactly what I want to do in life” – said no one ever.
Okay, not true. There are those people who know they want to become a pastry chef at the age of 5 and follow that dream for the rest of their life. But for most of us, we don’t know.
I constantly tell people that you never truly know what you like doing until you try it. You only learn what you don’t like to do.
ReLife’s Arata Kaizaki, who has become an unemployed, unmotivated adult in his late 20s, is given a chance to relive a high school life to change himself by ingesting a pill that makes him look 10 years younger. This is all to prepare him to re-enter the workforce with a newly gained perspective. So the first reason you know this is fiction, is because we all know high school is shit (there is definitely no bias in this statement). Oh, also because youth aging pills are not real. However, through this journey, he has a mentor who watches over his growth and is able to regain his social skills but also find himself at the same time.
To analogize with reality, I’d say this is like doing more school after undergrad. A masters, an MBA, a coding bootcamp, or just doing some certifications/courses. This isn’t the end all though. My point isn’t that we all need go back to school in order to become employed—sometimes you just need a break or some soul searching.
The Life Lesson
It’s okay to pivot. It’s not too late to change. You’re not running out of time. Your journey is your own journey.
There are so many times we have to switch gears. Maybe you work a job to get some experience and you realize you sucked at it. Or you just hated it. Or you were having a bad time in life but needed to make ends meet any way you could. There are a million reasons why we choose to suffer in a ‘less-than-ideal’ job. However, just like how no two people are identical, the same could be said for our paths through life.
Too many times we compare ourselves to our peers. People who graduated with us. People we grew up with. Our family. Our parents’ friends’ kids. That really hot stranger on the bus who looks like they have their shit together but is suffering from intense social anxiety and crippling insecurity.
Yes yes yes. I know. You’ve heard it a MILLION times. Don’t compare yourself to others. Yadda yadda yadda. Well that’s not my point here. I mean you shouldn’t, but I get it. It’s not that easy. I still do it.
I’m talking specifically more about career and what you want to do in life. And how it is okay to feel lost at times. It’s okay to need to backtrack. It’s okay to take a break. Sometimes you actually need that break to figure out what you want to do.
What does success look like to you? Is it having a fancy title? Is it purpose?(if so, you should totally read the Paper Mario life lesson on striving for purpose) Is it money? Is it being happy? Is it being able to eat McDonalds without feeling guilty? Regardless of what it is, I implore you to take a step back, figure out what matters most to you, and take a step in THAT direction. The right direction. Rome wasn’t built in a day and weebs weren’t converted with one anime. ‘Success’, however you want to define it, takes time.
