Being a recent college graduate can be frustrating – you’ve spent the last 17 years being a student and not having to worry about the triumphs and trials of adulthood. Once you walk across that stage, grab your diploma, and say goodbye to college life, it feels like you’ve been knocked back down to the bottom of the barrel.
Being fresh out of college is like starting completely over. Everything you’ve worked on building toward your entire life suddenly doesn’t matter anymore. You can’t waltz through life doing math equations. Your essay writing skills aren’t exactly shocking to employers. The life skills that are important for you to flourish in the real world aren’t taught in a classroom. Because of this, it’s overwhelming to be a new adult in the real world. There’s one thing we never seem to take into consideration: we have so much time. I don’t mean we have time to put things off, because we don’t. But we have the time to do the things we think we don’t have the time to do.
We have time to be patient. There is so much time to learn and time to grow to be the people we want to be. Things don’t happen over night and we have the time wait and do what we can to help ourselves grow. We have time to figure out what we’re doing with our lives.
We have time to move on from those who hurt us.
And we have time to find the people who treat us better than we ever imagined possible. We have time to find our soul mates. We have time to fall in love. There’s plenty of time for us to not settle, and to take our time to find someone who truly compliments ourselves in every way imaginable. Don’t let the progress of others affect or hinder yours. Sometimes people get there a little quicker than others and that’s okay.
We have time to stop and smell the flowers – the time to take some detours and try new things. There’s plenty of time to see the world. Take that time to go on adventures and meet new people. See the world through a different lens.
There’s time to heal what is broken. We have to put our pride aside and mend wounds we’ve caused others and allow them to mend the wounds they’ve caused us. And when those who caused the wounds won’t own up to it and fix it, we have the time to mend ourselves, too. We have the time to forgive those who hurt us, and to be not okay. And then we have the time to ask for help when we can’t fix it on our own.
There shouldn’t be this urgency to work our way into a career that we want and enjoy and deserve. To reiterate, nothing is going to happen overnight. There is so much time to take the steps we need to take to get us where we want to be in a career setting. We have time to work and mold ourselves into who and what we need and want to be. We have to follow our dreams, even if we feel foolish doing so.
There are endless opportunities to make a difference.
It may not be the world, but it might even be just one person. We have the time to make a positive impact on others if only we set aside the time to try. Take the time to do something you’ve never done before. There’s time for uncertainty – we don’t have to have all the answers right now.
We have time to be honest with one another. There’s time to tell each other how we feel and to not be sorry about it. Be unapologetic, but don’t be brutal. We have time to not worry about things that are beyond our control. Maybe they love you and maybe they don’t. But we have to take some risks and ask and put ourselves out there. And when we find out the hard way that not everyone is going to love us, we have time to grieve and accept that. We have time to move on.
When we find someone we want to keep around, we have the time to do something about it.
We have time to make the decision to get rid of the toxic people for good, and the time to say goodbye to someone who isn’t good for you. We can recognize when someone isn’t treating us right and we have the time to decide that we don’t have to put up with it.
Life is short and you never know when it may be gone. This isn’t about procrastination. I’m not saying that we have time to put things off; I’m saying that we have time to do the things we want to do and we needn’t worry about it. We have time.
Featured image via Maria Orlova on Pexels
