Reimagine Your Future
Purpose is what so many people struggle with after their world has been flipped sideways. When it feels like everything in our lives has changed, the things that once mattered often don’t seem important anymore. It’s this awful catch-22: you feel lost because you don’t know where you’re headed, but it seems impossible to decide on a destination when you’re so lost. Whether your life changed in an instant or broke down over a long period of time-you’ve gone through something that put you in the place to learn how absolutely unclear your future is at any given moment. Since you can’t possibly know what’s coming next, and therefore feel out of control, there’s an impulse to believe that nothing really matters anymore when your world falls apart. Like, Why should I even bother when I don’t know what tomorrow holds? If I don’t know what tomorrow holds, then how can I make plans or have goals? Why waste my time? You are struggling with the uncertainty of your world because whatever crisis you’ve gone through has made you realize-some of you for the first time ever-that you are not in control of life. During the quarantine in the spring of 2020, our city declared a mandatory stay-at-home order. Probably the same thing happened to you. because we were nonessential workers, we weren’t allowed to leave our house except to go to the grocery store or the pharmacy. When we did go out, we had to wear gloves and masks, and frankly, the anxiety of leaving the house and seeing our once bustling city look like a scene from a postapocalyptic young adult novel made Scott and me not want to leave at all. Before quarantine I got lulled into a false sense of control because I had freedom over my life and my daily routine. I could go to the grocery store or to my favorite coffee shop or on a dinner date with my friends whenever I wanted, and since I’m an adult and I’m privileged to live in a country that doesn’t control my day-to-day life, nobody else had a say in what I did. But the truth is, we were never really in control because we are never truly in control of life. If you’ve ever lost a loved one without warning, then you know that you are not in control.