Hey seniors! Are you feeling fear and other emotions around having to start your life outside of high school? Because I definitely am, haha! It can be very uncomfortable to contemplate what you will do post graduation. Going to college, starting to work, joining the military, taking a gap year, and many more options are worth considering as a graduating senior in high school. But which one? That’s the real question, and it can be a hard one to answer confidently. In this article, I’ll speak of my feelings, and how I am going about this scary, sticky period of my life, and hopefully it can be relatable and helpful for someone who feels similarly.
Currently, my family is preparing to move to Portugal sometime in July. We are clearing out our home, which we have lived in for about nine years now, and staging it so that it can be sold. The upcoming move has me quite stressed, and honestly, afraid. I am afraid because I don’t know what I’ll do during my gap year in Portugal. I don’t know if I will get a job, or travel, or spend time with my family, etc. There are so many options that I feel quite overwhelmed, and yes I am aware that this is a good problem to have, but it is scary all the same.
I have been feeling some sadness recently because I don’t really know where my life is going and what is coming next for me. This is a valid feeling, certainly, but it has also prompted me to look inward and ask myself why I am so uncomfortable not knowing what will come next. Why can’t I, and most other people, be comfortable letting the wind take us where it desires? Why do we need to know where we are going, as opposed to simply taking a step into the darkness and just trusting that we will end up where we need to be?
In my opinion, our culture has shaped us in this way. We are conditioned to always know what is coming next, and are told, systemically, that this is the right way to live our lives. For example: since Kindergarten, we have had a place to be – a place we have to be – 5 days out of 7, which is quite a large portion of our life. We have woken up every single day either knowing we have to go to school, or, god forbid, having the freedom of a weekend day in which we get to decide what to do. Our weeks have been planned out forcefully since we were 3 years old, and now we are 18. For the past fifteen years, while our brains were adapting to their environment, building habits, and learning how the world works, we have had a day to day routine not created by us.
The reason I am giving this specific example is because I believe that it is the root of our discomfort around not having a clear path in front of us.
But I, Elvis Leal, Hamilton’s savior, am here to save you from all your doubts… just kidding! That would be quite contradictory, wouldn’t it? I can’t give you a clear path or clear answer to your concerns, and neither can anyone else. That is the point of my article. We have to, as young adults, dare to stare the unknown in its face and say “I trust you.”
It really isn’t that simple though, is it? We have, for 15 years, been conditioned to do otherwise, and that much influence can not just simply be left behind. Now, there really is no one way of going about ridding ourselves of this conditioning. Everybody is different, and therefore will have a different way of doing it. I am, however, going to say how I am dealing with it, in hopes that it can be motivational or helpful for you, Mr. Reader!
As I said before, I am moving to Portugal and am not too sure what I will be doing during my gap year. There is one thing, though; the only thing that I do have planned which coincides with my efforts to clear myself of the cultural influence previously discussed. I will spend two months in a Vipassana retreat, a place which people come to as a way of disconnecting from society, and I will volunteer there while also partaking in the practices.
A Vipassana retreat usually spans ten days, and is free to attend. I, as a benefit of volunteering, will stay two months. It requires participants to spend most of their time alone without speaking to others, inside their own mind, meditating for up to ten hours per day. Yes, this is extremely rigorous and extremely difficult to commit to. I am not at all confident in my ability to go through this experience easily, confidently, or without struggle. That is not the point of the experience. The point is to go in with all of one’s conditioning, societal influences, emotional burdens, and more, and let the silence purge all of it.
Given that this is the only thing I actually have planned for my gap year and that I will do it early in the year, I have no idea in hell what I will want to do after the two months are over. Part of the reason I want to do this is so that I can say goodbye to my fear of the unknown and come out a new man, a man who trusts fate and nature, and is comfortable trust falling into its arms.
Again, this is only my way of facing the unknown, and it may differ strongly to that of my peers, but me going into a Vipassana is not what matters. What matters is that I have built up the bravery to stand in the unknown. I encourage all seniors, high school or college, and anyone else who is in a similar point in their life, to face their fear, if they have the means to, and stand in the unknown.
