What's Next?

I ask myself this question a hundred times a day. I do not know what is to come. I do not know where I’ll be a year from now, ten years from now, where I’ll be standing when I take my final breath. It consumes me. It haunts me. It thrills me to think of the endlessness of what could be.

So often I long to be settled into a life. I watch the families that come through my school and long for that kind of stability, that kind of ability to define oneself as a parent, a spouse, a professional. I long for that kind of understanding, because as of right now, I’m just a young, dumb kid with her entire life in front of her. Every decision seems life-altering. Every choice seems to change my future. Every idea I have could be the answer to which path I am supposed to take. It’s sometimes too much, to have such fundamental power over my own existence.

And sometimes, I adore it. In the past few days I’ve gotten a new job offer, a plea to return to school, and an invitation to move to Prague. What’s next? I could go anywhere and do anything and be anyone I choose. There’s something really poignantly grand about that idea.

And still, I do not know what is to come. Perhaps it’s something I have not yet even considered, some new and exciting adventure that hadn’t crossed my mind. The possibilities are infinite.

What I do know, what I have decided for my life, is that I would rather spend my time here doing what I love than waste it preparing for things that may never come. I get stuck in this contradiction. I want to see the world, but want to save enough money to be able to settle one day. I want to own a house, but want to move from place to place, exploring new surroundings and people and ways of life. I want to love people so deeply that to be away from them for a moment means missing them, but I also want to be free enough to leave my world behind.

And to make any one choice means a loss of the other. To live for the moment means to be unprepared for the future. To live for the future means to be unappreciative of the present, and I am now struggling somewhere in between.

What’s next? Well, I’m not sure. All I can really do is be grateful for what has been and what will be. And I am. I’m grateful for all of the adventures I’ve been through and all that are to follow. I am grateful for the choices I’ve made and the choices I am continuing to make and that I have the choice at all. I am grateful that I am alive and living my life.

And I am grateful for the certainty that when I draw that final breath, whenever it may be, wherever I may be, that it will be one of gratitude, of fulfillment, of understanding. I will close my eyes and wonder, what’s next?