Please tell us your general age group
early 20s
And then tell us how you perceive life.
Do you think life is easy/hard, a struggle?
i think it's complex. there are periods of easiness and hardness... and those can be very different for individuals. i had a very difficult early childhood, an easy later childhood, easy early teenage, hard later teenage, very easy college, very hard immediately following, and now things are beginning to ease up again.
as for struggles, i think those are inevitable and good. we'll always be struggling against something, but that's okay, because it's how we get stronger. it's not necessarily bad to struggle, even if it's challenging and can wear you out from time to time. it also affords you victory, determination, and wisdom.
Do you feel like you have a lot of control over how your life goes?
i'm at a weird point now - i'm starting to see exactly how terrifyingly much control i do have. i've always been on a fairly standard set course, and now i'm realizing that the world is really bigger and there are more viable options than i had realized. one of my friends recently moved to the middle east, started teaching, and got married. we all thought she was just studying abroad for a bit - it's turned into her life path. i could do that. i could move abroad. i could go see the middle east. it's such a complicated tangle of having enough commitments to be able to afford to make new commitments.
Have you found a specific outlook towards life that helps you a lot? (for example, you have learned that perseverence is the key to success or that tolerance is the key to relationships).
learning to trust is good. i'm learning to trust in relationships, which scares me a lot. learning to surrender and to give the benefit of the doubt, learning to not cover my ass all the time. learning that it's okay to totally be who i am.
actually that's a good one - just being who i am. for a long time i've tried to be someone else and it's a hell of a lot easier and more fun to just be a good version of myself. not that i don't still struggle, but it's getting better.
i like the phrase "trust the universe" a lot. i think that a lot. it's my mantra of sorts, i guess. it really resonates with me - makes sense to me - and brings me to a place of calmness. i have trouble trusting individuals and situations but i do trust the big picture, so bringing myself back to the big big picture is good. also living in the moment is good, when i can manage to do it. it's the middle-big picture that gives me problems - when it's big enough that it seems like the big picture but it's actually not.
Do you have goals in your life that you think you will achieve or are your goals out of reach?
i've achieved most of goals i've really put forth. my goals tend to be very global and longterm... things like finish school, get a job, go to a good college, establish good lasting friendships, find someone i want to spend my life with, etc. so essentially i feel like my goals are always in reach, if i honestly put legwork behind them. i think the thing that's been surprising me is the order of these things. i had a very set perception of how my life would go, and things are starting to get out of order, and i'm having to deal with that cognitively. like i always thought i'd go to grad school right out of college - didn't happen. i thought i'd have a great job, too, but the economy tanked, so that went south. and then i've met someone i think i will be with for quite a long time... this isn't really the order i expected. it's okay, but... i'm having to shuffle.
my biggest problem right now is i do feel a bit trapped, and it's really of my own fault - i can't decide the path i want to take next, so i'm stuck in my current blah position. which is okay, but not ideal, and i CANNOT STAND not having a big longterm goal, like i always have. it's driving me a bit nutty. i just really don't want to make the wrong decision, so it's paralyzing me a bit.
i don't think life is necessarily harder than i thought, but it's harder in much different ways than i thought.