Make peace with the life you did not get so that you can make way for the life that can be yours to find its way to you. Recently, I was watching “Devious Maids,” one of the guilty pleasures on Lifetime TV. One of the characters, Zoila, is a maid, and she feels that all she can be is a maid because she was unable to accept a scholarship and go to college. She does not want her daughter to be a maid, and rightly so. However, the daughter wants to pay her own way to college rather than depend on her mother and father. Zoila’s mother is adamant and does everything to make sure her daughter doesn’t make the same mistake she did, even trying to get her fired from her maid job. Now, the moral here is not that Zoila wanted better for her daughter. It is the fact that Zoila never got over not being able to go to college and pursue her dreams, so she accepted a life of “demeaning servitude” because she thought that was all she was good for.
How many of us are still upset about a life we did not get? I will be the first one to raise my hand. I never got to go to a prestigious University. To this day, I still regret not being accepted to Fordham University, which was my first choice College. There are days when I wonder what my life would have been like if I had gone to Fordham University. I do know for a fact that my life would have definitely been different. I had loved everything about Fordham U. Its prestige, its alumni program, its special programs for High School students, programs that I took part in. I even won an Internship of the Year Award. I had interned at some of the best Companies. My life was on the right path. I was not accepted for reasons that were out of my control, although I had the grades. Instead, I was accepted to another University, and while that was a private University, it was still not Fordham. I planned to spend two years at that University, get better grades, and transfer to Fordham University. Yes, I was that obsessed with attending Fordham University. However, life did not work out that way. I made do with the University I was accepted to.
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It was not until I was watching that episode of Devious Maid that it hit me. I never made peace with not being able to attend Fordham University or even Fordham Law. Recent circumstances made me realize how much resentment I had for not attending a prestigious University. School and education were my identities. Since I never got to go to Fordham U. for my Bachelor’s degree, I decided that I would apply to Fordham Law and combine the prestige of becoming a Lawyer with the prestige of attending Fordham Law, a Tier 1 Law School. I had to get my J.D, then my LL.M (Masters of Law), and then my LL.D (Doctorate of Law). But that did not happen. Well, that part was on me.
I realized that I did not want to go to Law School. Oh, the horror of horrors. My family was appalled. They thought I had no direction and I was wasting my life. I still have an Aunt, who to this day still asks if I will reconsider my decision not to go to Law School. I had to restore my family’s honour and do something prestigious with my life. It would help if I went to Oxford or Cambridge University. I have even found myself encouraging my nephew to use his grades to apply to Oxford or Cambridge. I want him to make something of his life and get the opportunities I never got. I hope he forgives me for putting that on him.
Even though the decision not to go to Law School was mine, I still spent the next ten years of my life resenting my life. I know that if I got certain opportunities, I would have had a better life. Yes, that was how deeply obsessed and meshed my identity was with the “right schools,” the “meeting the right people,” marrying “up,” and living the “right affluent lifestyle.” To add fuel to the fire, I sacrificed my life for “family,” which did not turn out well. It actually blew up in my face—more pain and resentment.
I have spent many years resenting my life and where it has ended up. As a result, things came into my life to help me feel worse about that life. Yes, I have done many things that brought me happiness, but that was fleeting for me. Throughout all that, I learned something very important. No matter how much we may love our surface life, it will be fleeting if, beneath all that, we are filled with resentment for the life we felt we had missed out on.
One of the things that I have learned about the life that we live is that if we are not okay with our life, it is easy for others to make us feel bad about our station in life. However, if we are okay with who we are and where we are, then no one can make us feel ashamed, guilty for what we did not achieve by their standards. That is why we need to have our own standards for our lives and make peace with who, what, and where we are in life. If we do not like where we are then, we can take steps to change course. We do not need approval from anyone outside of us to do things differently for our lives.
If you were to seriously look at who you are now and then look back at the life, you thought you missed out on, ask yourself, are those things important to me today? Do I really want that life? Do I still think like that 22yr old? The chances are that life is no longer important to you. There is far more to life than having the right contacts, the right network, and the right life. Those things were no longer important to me, but I never made peace with all that. I just went about life continuously burying my hopes and dreams and finding other things to make me happy.
Deep down, I was not happy at all. I felt that I had no ambition because I did not want to pursue Law or higher degrees. However, that was just the criticisms of others that were creeping into my ears and damaging my brain. I started criticizing and putting myself down in the same manner. I felt as if I did not turn out into anything good. I began to believe the criticisms that I had no direction even though the previous direction towards Law School, Masters, and Doctorate was not making me happy.
There is far more to life. Our individual happiness is far more important than getting into the right schools and making the right connections. Do the things you love. If people think you have no direction, then that is not your issue. We all deserve to live a life that makes us happy, contented, and filled with love and joy. Not some life that creates misery for us. If wanting to be happy, filled with passion, love, and joy, cause me to lack direction, then so be it. At least I am creating my happiness and my passionate life. I do not need to live my life in a way to gain approval from others.
I have learned that I am my own person, and I decide where I want to go and if others are not happy with that well, I am not a child, and I moved out of my parents home 18years ago, so I do not need permission to live my own life. No one should try to force someone else to live in misery just to be seen as having direction. Matter-of-fact, coming from a very strict and structured childhood, I am so happy that I can throw caution to the wind and live my life in freedom WITHOUT direction. I love where my life takes me; sometimes, I’m pleasantly surprised, while I choose that direction other times. I love living life from the seat of my pants or shorts or the deck of a long pier with my legs hanging off in the beautiful Atlantic Ocean or the clear blue-green Caribbean Sea.
