To the girl with the perpetually ink-stained fingers and a map of the world taped to her bedroom wall, hello from the future. It’s me. It’s us. I’m writing to you from a life you can’t quite imagine yet, and that’s the whole point.
I remember you at seventeen, sitting in that squeaky desk in your high school library, meticulously planning every single step for the next ten years. You had it all figured out: the right university, the perfect major that was both practical and passionate, the internship that would lead to the dream job in a city far from home. You clutched that plan like a life raft, believing that any deviation would mean you were sinking.
Well, I have to tell you, we sunk that raft. Spectacularly.
Remember that summer you were supposed to be volunteering to pad your college applications? Instead, you impulsively took a job scooping ice cream at that little shop by the pier. You were so mad at yourself, thinking you’d thrown away your future for a few months of waffle cones and sunsets. But something funny happened there, didn’t it? You learned how to talk to anyone. You learned how to handle the pressure of a line out the door. You befriended the owner, an old man with stories that were more captivating than any textbook you were forcing yourself to read. That ‘unproductive’ summer taught you more about people and yourself than any planned activity ever could.
That’s the thing you need to hear: the detours are the destination. The unplanned, messy, and sometimes scary moments are where you’ll find the person you’re meant to become. The major you’re agonizing over? You’ll change it. Twice. The city you’ve pinned all your hopes on? You’ll live on the opposite coast. The perfect, linear career path? It’s going to look more like a beautiful, chaotic scribble, and you will love it for its unpredictability.
So please, do me a favor. Put down the ten-year plan. Look up from the map. Life isn’t a checklist to be completed; it’s a story waiting to be written, one messy, beautiful, and surprising sentence at a time. Don’t be afraid to write a chapter that no one, especially not your seventeen-year-old self, saw coming.