My place in the world.

Sometimes I wonder what I want to do when I grow up. Indeed, I know, I’m 39 and I still think about what I’ll do when I grow up. For those of who are asking yourselves “isn’t it a bit late?”I answer, perhaps.
Perhaps, because in life we move on, we grow, we evolve, we fall, we get up and we can even change our destiny. I think back to the movie The Big Kahuna and the final monologue in which, at a certain point, someone says: “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know, at twenty-two, didn’t know what to do with their lives. The most interesting forty-year olds I know still don’t know.”

I spent years trying to understand what my place in the world was, feeling guilty for not having a single answer. Indeed, because there are many things, perhaps too many, I like and to choose only one of them has always seemed limiting to me. And what if by chance, in making a choice, I end up excluding from my life the most important thing? What if I lose a piece along the way? What if…?
A little bit like Sliding Doors, if I had taken that subway that day, what would have happened? If I had gone to Berlin to work, what would have changed? These are the choices we make that determine who we are. In all aspects of our life. Even the smallest of decisions.

I’ve always felt a profound admiration for those who already knew at the age of six that they wanted to be doctors, vets, teachers, etc. They knew. They knew what their place in the world would be and so it was. They grew up, they studied and ended up doing what they wanted and today they are happy doctors, teachers and professionals. Simple, clean, linear. Perhaps.

I spent years looking for my work; I changed so many that I’d need an entire day to list them.
And I spent years feeling inadequate compared to other young women because I was always the different one, the black sheep of the group: the one without a boyfriend, the one who left her job because she was dissatisfied, the one who was crazy, the one that got up and left without an apparent reason. The one who was outside the group, despite being in it. And if my friends, the people who love me, had difficulties understanding me, just imagine what the rest of the world could think of me.
I felt criticized and judged, I saw fingers being pointed at me and my behavior, I perceived unspoken words (reading comic book expressions on people’s faces) and I felt misunderstood. Somewhat similar to the ugly duckling, small and black; I went around the world feeling different and misunderstood.

Being outside the box and standing out from the crowd is as much fun as it is frustrating, the problem lies when it’s not a way of doing, but a way of being. And this is how it has always been with me. I was taught to think with my own mind; they told me to assert my ideas, they told me that you have to fight for what you believe in and they showed me that expressing yourself always pays off. Well, they never told me how hard and painful it would be at certain times.
This lonely journey, becomes a crowded street full of people to walk along with when you fully accept what you are: a black sheep. And the moment you accept it, the rest of the world realizes it and starts treating you differently. It will take a while, it might not be immediately, sometimes it will be tiring, but it certainly will give you many satisfactions.

Accept the advice, just this once.

A lot of people are not going to understand. A lot of people will try in every way to trip you and make you fall. They’ll laugh at you, make fun of you, call you names which are better left unsaid.
It doesn’t matter. Move on, don’t be afraid to be yourself because it’s time to make a choice: choose to be the bad copy of someone or choose to be yourself, and unique because of this.
Because only by being yourself will you be able to listen to what your mind and heart tell you.

And make mistakes!
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; make lots of mistakes, with pleasure and awareness. This way, when they ask you what you want to do when you grow up, you’ll be able to answer. Because it doesn’t matter what type work you end up doing, the important thing is that you do it with passion and love. Only these two things will allow you to move forward in times of difficulty and bring out the best in you.