If I asked you right now what you want out of life, your answer would most likely be to be happy. But what does being happy mean? Don’t worry if you don’t have a specific definition because society is here to decide that for you.
From the moment we are born, we are taught that our life purpose will be fulfilled when we find a good job, get married and have children, and that’s perfectly fine for some people, but it turned out I wasn’t one of those. Instead, I was the rebel one in the family who didn’t set finding a boyfriend as a priority and who dared to study arts, something extremely unusual for a village girl.
That, coming from where I come from, is the clear evidence of being out of your mind. In my circle, you were supposed to get a job in what I call the safe fields: law, business and medical. But I didn’t.
Ignoring the outside pressure, I stood my ground and graduated in Film Making. Then the job search started and that was when society tried to get its point across one more time.
I found it so hard to get my foot in the door in the industry I was passionate about that I began to second guess my decision. Suddenly, there it was society again telling me that I had made a big mistake and I should go back to school and study something “normal”, and so I did that.
I completed my studies in Tourism & Business while I worked in almost any job I could grab, comforting myself with the fantasy that studying the right thing would provide me with the great opportunity I was longing for.
However, the universe had other plans. In 2008 the famous recession hit the world and Spain got in a spinning circle from where it still trying to get out. Millions of people were made redundant and youngsters found harder than ever to find a job in almost any field.
How ironic! That was when I understood that no matter what I did, it was going to require all my effort to find my place in the business world, so why should I use my energy on something I didn’t enjoy?
It is said that when the student is ready, the teacher appears and sure it did. There I was, passed my mid-twenties and with no real guarantee of almost anything. Society kept telling me to make money, get a husband and start a family, and suddenly it hit me. I realized I had been so busy trying to make money that I had forgotten about my most important asset: time.
Every day we are given a 24 hour gift voucher and it is our responsibility to choose wisely how to spend it. By midnight it is taken away from us, sometimes we might receive another one, however other times we might not. There is no guarantee that the voucher will keep appearing at our doorstep every day.
I made my decision a year ago. I went back to work on attempting to make a living off my passion because if I’m going to fail, might as well do it at something I love, and in case tomorrow I don’t get my 24 hour voucher back in my mailbox, I at least will have certainly given a good use to my last one. How are you going to use this gift you are given?