Julio's Musings

A few months back I wrote about passion and figuring out what my whole purpose was. It’s a topic that I somehow managed to get involved in with four different people over the past weekend, so I figured I’d revisit the subject in a new post.

I was reminded of the fact that my original goal in life was to become a doctor. It was something I had said since I was very little. As I got older, I was unsure if it was something I could really do, but I was going to try anyway. Then, during my senior year of high school, my depression hit. This meant I was very down on myself with very low self-esteem and very open to any suggestions that agreed with my negative ideas of myself.

During this time, I ended up discussing my plans for after high school with one of my teachers. I told her how I planned to apply to the University of Chicago and work my way through there to go to medical school. This teacher didn’t like my idea, however. She proceeded to tell me how my GPA wasn’t good enough to even bother applying there (potentially true since my GPA was 3.1. But, hey, at least it was a B average!) and that I should completely rethink my plans of going to medical school because I probably wouldn’t cut it. Basically, she said I wasn’t smart enough, but, you know, in a “nice” way. Yes, there are other reasons on why I decided to not pursue my original dream, but that was the defining moment, the thing that made me begin to really rethink it all. Sometimes I wish I had at least tried; to have at least applied to the U of C to see what would happen.

I recently read about some of the most common regrets of those on their deathbed (link). They are as follows:

1. Wishing they had the courage to live true to themselves and not live by the expectations of others.
2. Wishing they didn’t work themselves so hard and missing out on their families and loved ones.
3. Wishing they had the courage to express their feelings and to not hold in old bitterness and resentment.
4. Wishing they had stayed in touch with their friends.
5. Wishing they had let themselves be happier and not simply convincing themselves that they were content in life.

Those are all very sad regrets; regrets that a lot of people fall into without realizing it. We go about our lives and, when we finally look back at it all, we see all the things we sacrificed to live how we thought we should.

This is why finding something you’re passionate about is important. Nobody is ever going to have a perfect life, but you can have the best life possible by doing things that will either make you happy or lead to happiness. Don’t spend your life working in a job you hate. Yes, we all have responsibilities that need taking care of: bills need to be paid, families need to be taken care of, etc. But at some point you have to realize that you also have a responsibility to yourself, to better yourself and to take care of yourself, and part of doing that is finding a passion that helps you to feel happiness. 

It’s not an easy thing finding what you’re passionate about. My passion is in helping people, and when I was younger I had always wanted to do that by becoming a doctor. But now I’m finding different ways to do it. Perhaps when I’m older I’ll regret not being a doctor, but hopefully I’ll also know I still managed to live for my passion of helping people in some different way.

Don’t wait until you’re dying to start wishing you had done things in life differently. I know this has been said many times in many different ways by countless different people. Don’t waste away your chances for happiness while you have the chance to still do something about it. If you are stuck in some office job that you hate when all you want to do is write, then find time everyday after work to write. If you have a love for science or math or computers and you love sharing that passion with people, become a teacher and bring out that same joy in others. If you have a true passion for acting, then tryout for shows at community theaters and expand your horizons (even if those shows are “smaller” than what you’d want to do). If your biggest joy are your children and you want to be a housewife or househusband and focus everything on raising and teaching your children, don’t let others tell you that you should do something “more” with your life. Heck, if you have absolutely no idea what you’re passionate about, then find something that’s interesting to you and learn as much as you can about it and maybe even take a class for it. You may find a passion that you never knew existed.

Live knowing that you at least tried. Be true to yourself even when it goes against the expectations of others. Don’t work so hard that you miss out on the joys that life can hold. Express how you feel and what you believe and also respect the feelings and beliefs of others. Don’t lose friendships simply because of differences in beliefs. Along with that, don’t lose out on good friendships because you kept yourself too busy to nurture those relationships. And, most importantly, know that happiness can very much be a choice. It’s not always easy to accomplish, but it’s always within your grasp.