Each person seeks to find a purpose in their lives, but it is often difficult to do so. How does one find a purpose? Is there one predetermined, waiting for you to find it? Or must we decide it for ourselves and follow it hoping that it is in fact right for us? Most of my life I liked to think that there was a written path that would suit each person best, a destiny that we are each created to fulfill. I imagined that life was like a slab of marble with a piece of art inside it, waiting to be exposed by an artist. I kept hoping that as I grew older, the path that I was meant to take in life would become more obvious and that I would realize the career I was meant to have.  As the years passed, so did various dreams and aspirations, yet I still could not feel the shape my life was meant to take beneath my fingers. I tried to glimpse at my future but it changed with each day, with fantasies of art and books and music and poetry leaping past, blurred by alluring. Each year my interests seem to shuffle and reform, never quite the same.

When I moved from New Jersey to Pennsylvania immediately before highschool, any forming ideas I had for my future from middle school faded as I focused on adjusting to the environment that I now found myself in. Was this part of my predestined path or was this a wrinkle in my destiny? How different would I have been if I had stayed at my old school, and which version of myself was I meant to be? I spoke to a friend from my old school about my thoughts. “I don’t think there’s something that you’re meant to be. You’re getting a fresh start and you can decide who you’ll be now,” she replied. I reread her message several times. “Deciding” who I would be seemed dishonest. But as the school year began, I understood her sentiment more clearly. It isn’t that one is meant to fabricate an entirely new existence for yourself, but rather that you choose how you present your true self. Humans are dynamic and complicated and difficult to properly portray, but if you can properly gather your dominant components and summarize them, you can be yourself more effectively.

I eventually returned to the question of my future. I listed my ideas for the future on a piece of paper then stared at it for a while. The list was anxiety inducing in its length. I started on a new piece of paper and made a much shorter list. This time they were careers that I felt were really possible, ones that I could picture myself occupying in the future. This list I kept in mind for a while. I spoke with my friends about it, I consulted mentors as to their experiences, I considered what my dreams spoke of. I wanted a career tied to art or music, and I wanted to make direct, positive impact on people’s lives. And eventually I made a choice, based on what spoke to me most clearly in the tongues of my aspirations: Music education. I had been very positively affected by music teachers, particularly band directors, my whole life, and them very inspiring. I still questioned my choice, though, so I spoke with my band director.

“You have to make a choice at some point. If you think you can do it, go for it. If it goes wildly wrong, which I doubt it will, you can always do something else. You’ll figure it out.” And so I’ll try to figure it out, be the master of my own destiny, as we all must be. The future awaits those who decide that they are the ones being awaited.