This question has been plaguing me for the better part of 96 hours, since a meeting with a professor sent me spiraling into self doubt and uncertainty about my future. A fringe benefit of paralyzing terror regarding the future is some brief clarity regarding what you do want, and hopefully you can turn these things into some sort of cogent answer to the black hole ahead.
1. I want to-do lists to become check lists full of red xs and tally marks. I want to see places and do things that make other people jealous
2. I want to live in other cities and become citizens of other countries and finally belong nowhere at all because my heart is in too many places
3. I want to be a citizen of the world. If ever I meet a person who is bi-lingual I always want to know one of their languages. I don't want to be told what people are saying in films by condescending sub titles, I want to translate for myself. I want to know words in other languages that lack translations and use them to perfectly describe my thrilling life
4. I don't want to lose people. This one is doomed for failure in the same way that we are all inevitably ambling towards headstones but it doesn't make it any less true for me. I don't want to lose friends to petty fights or inconvenience. I want to be the friend that keeps in touch, even across the globe.
5. I want to fall in love. And even if it doesn't work out I want to know that I was capable of loving someone and that he was capable of loving me
6. I want to work with people and listen to their wrong opinions and the poetry of their right answers and clever solutions
7. I want to question myself and challenge myself and improve myself
8. I want two homes. I want an urban oasis with large windows and minimalism and chrome and hard wood where we can only store 4 roles of toilet paper at a time. I want a country escape where I can be reminded of the world before humans got smart and greedy and built glimmering idols, 97 stories tall, to prove their prowess and competency.
9. I want ice cream. I'd love a better body, and I continue to work for it, but I hope to never be so diet-crazed or food conscious or so ill that I can not enjoy some ice cream.
10. I want no regrets. Whatever choices or mistakes I make, whatever crimes I commit, whatever recognition I receive or whatever trade-offs I make, I want them to be in honest enough pursuits that I can look back and smile, not wince, on my formative years.
and a bonus...
11. I want to be young forever. I don't mean that I want my boobs to stay perky or that I want to be able to do tequila shots without a hangover. I just mean that I hope I am able to continue looking forward, at all that has yet to happen and at all the possibilities in each new stage of my life. And I hope I stay resistant to the idea of stages, and feel free to draw in the lines myself.
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