Starting off:
I can’t believe it is the end of May. This week I have a personal essay about life, growing up, and imagining my future. A lot to digest but also good to think about in a non-stressful way.
The Meaning of Meaningful
I have always felt some sort of pressure to succeed and live a full life — the word meaningful etched into my brain. I would subconsciously ask myself: what path in life will lead you to do the most, to be the most? To be your most successful, most accomplished, most known self?
Meaningful to me used to mean people knowing your name. I imagined a meaningful life as more than 15 seconds of fame, more than a life in suburbia, more than a lucrative career, and overall more than normal. I found myself enchanted by the silver screen, with movies and tv shows that made the mundane seem extraordinary. I wanted to be the best at something — I thought that would make my life meaningful.
What I saw was what I knew, if they were happy and fulfilled in their path, maybe I would be too. From watching Olympic figure skating and the young Anne Halthaway Disney movie Ice Princess, I wanted to be a professional figure skater. I watched Karate Kid — both the original and the Jaden Smith one — and then I started Aikido (a Japanese Martial art focused on defense). My love and connection to the ocean stems both from living on the water at such a young age and my love of the teen movie Aquamarine. At one point I wanted to be a singer but was that from my daily shower concerts or my never-ending binge of Hannah Montana. After watching Ratatouille, I marveled at the thought of being a famous food critic. Even now, despite my loathing of war and conflict, every spy movie and secret agent thriller I watch has me wanting to jump across buildings, be in a high speed car chase, risk my life in a fight to the death, and in the end save the world.
Basically what one has learned about me so far is that I am easily persuaded by feel-good story lines. I yearn to experience everything and be everything. Recognizing these moments in my life and the decisions I made based off of them, it is more than clear the effect watching had on my young mind. There was something so hypnotic and powerful about how passionate the characters were about one thing. To me, their whole life depended on that one moment in time.
Now, my perception of television and movies is clearly so problematic. My younger self was convinced that my entire existence was defined by a snapshot of my life, grounded in what I deemed meaningful and important to me in that instant. The gravity of my decision making became almost unbearable. I felt the need to choose, the need to make extreme life decisions as soon as possible. I guess it's normal to dream about your future career and what your life will be but why? Why not live in the moment? Why did I feel the need to decide then? Why should I feel the need to decide now?
What I decided on at the knowledgeable age of 14: being an actress. The happiness and fulfillment would be mine for the taking. Never having to commit to one story line, one path, I could live a million lives in one. My dream of being the next Angelina Jolie has long passed but my desire today to be a journalist stems from that same thought — living a million lives in one. Journalism means telling a million different stories all within your own story line. When it comes down to it, both professions are story telling: creating a narrative for an invisible audience, inciting deep emotions into someone, and moving them into action.
I have always been worried about whether my life would turn out to be meaningful enough or not. Meaningful being the depictions I defined the word by. Characters who seemed successful, passionate, fully fulfilled, and made a difference in one way or another. In the same breath, people knowing their name — being important enough to be remembered in some way.
I used to be baffled at the thought of someone being truly happy living what I deemed a normal life. The people that are happy in suburbia their whole lives, in a boring career, plagued to live and die in the same unconscious state of being. To me, they couldn't truly be happy without more success than that. In my mind I drew a line between the people who thrived outside of the box and those too afraid to step out of it. I made dangerous assumptions — who was I to judge whether they were happy or not. Looking back, how dare I deem their existence meaningless.
With more life experience my views have changed. I have learned even when you think you have grown, you still have a lot more growing to do. When I was in love, I almost understood the small town, small life people around me. In moments of my most complete happiness I thought to myself, “I could live like this forever, this is all I will ever need.” I dropped the idea of being the most successful, of other people knowing my name. It didn’t matter to me anymore, I was as fulfilled as I thought one needed to be. A lifetime later, I know that path wouldn’t have been the right one and no matter what meaningful means — it wouldn’t have been the most meaningful. It wouldn’t have been the most true to myself. It would have been settling without realizing that I had settled.
I think the pressure I felt and ultimately still feel about my life being meaningful comes from the expectations of American society. I think the US does a great job of instilling the idea of money/success/normalcy=happiness in every aspect of youth. You graduate, get a job, get married, have children, and live happily ever after — the cookie cutter life we all grew up being taught was appropriate. Maybe you take some risks in between, travel every year if you are lucky, live in a neighborhood with a good school system, and hopefully the marriage works out. Not to say I don’t want some of those things but who's to say there has to be one way of living, one way of success, and one way of a meaningful life.
Thinking about my life turning out to be meaningful leads to pondering the most meaningful moments in my life so far. Those moments are personal, euphoric, heartbreaking, and earthshaking. They are filled with love, laughter, fear, agony, confusion, and spontaneity. They are truly all because of risks taken. Risks as simple as leaning into the moment, taking a step closer, saying yes to a last minute plan, laughing instead of crying, jumping when I maybe shouldn’t have, speaking up when I didn’t have the voice to, and recognizing for more than a split second that I was on the wrong path.
As what I imagine my life to be constantly changes, one thing remains. Meaningful means my own undying happiness and living in as much joy as possible. It means my personal self fulfillment and an eternity of love. It means stepping out of my comfort zone and challenging the definition of meaningful itself. It means living everything and being everything. It means experiencing as much as I can and releasing the pressure of constant growth. It means being comfortable with not knowing what you want and not wanting to know yet.
I wanted to share my experience growing up with Disney Channel and what I realize it instilled deep in me — a sense of imminent doom if your life isn’t the stereotypical definition of successful. Maybe this isn’t solely from my television consumption, but also a sense that wanting more than the cookie cutter life is out of the ordinary and something special in a bad way. Yes, all those characters took risks and followed their dreams per say, but it was all pretend. It was all fiction leading me to subconsciously believe that real life should be more calculated.
What I’m saying is change the damn path if you aren’t happy. There is no right or wrong way to live as long as it's what you want. If you don’t want to be doing what you are doing right now, stop doing it. I very much understand that it is not always that simple but who's to say it isn’t. Strive to be the most extraordinary version of yourself in your own definition of the word. Ultimately I am aiming to do the same, but if it doesn’t come together right now — that's okay too. You have no one to please but yourself.
Thank you the most for reading this long piece if you read all of it — means a lot to me. These are just my thoughts but again who am I to tell you whats right and wrong — decide for yourself is what I am really saying.
I hope you have a lovely rest of your week!
the most love,
isabelle