Life...

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

― John Lennon

What do you want to do with you life? I have been asked this question, or different variations of this question, many times before. When I enter high school it was “what do you want to study in college?” Now that I’m in college its “what do you want to do after college? Next it will be “how are you going to progress in you chosen career?” It’s a never-ending list of the same question of “what are you going to do next?” My answer to these questions is simple: be happy. 

Ideally, after college want to be doing what ever it is that makes me happy. Right know I have a picture in my head of opening my own photography studio and living on a farm in Vermont with a lot of dogs, (seriously, I love dogs! :D). But I like to live in the moment, be happy with what I have right now, not just dream about the future and hope I’m happy then. Yes the journey should be hard, and there will be some parts that will not make you happy, but it should not make you miserable all the time. There are many different paths I could take to get where I want to be. I could stay at Southern, tough it out for four years, but I’m not happy here. Life is to short to be doing something you hate; I have to choose the path that makes me the happiest, and that path leads me away from Southern. I don’t really have a plan for my life, like I said; life is to short. My philosophy is; do what makes you happy, when it makes you happy. Don’t miss out on something just because it doesn’t fit in your plan, plans have to change according to what life brings you. I know that there is a very good possibility that I will not make it to my farm in Vermont, and instead of have ten dogs, (yes ten, I have all their names picked out. I’m not crazy), I’ll have to live with just one at a time. But I also know that no matter where life takes me I will be happy because I will be with the people I love and that love me back. I know how cliché that sounds, but that’s all I really want out of life, to be loved and to love back. Like John Lennon said, the people that do things to become more successful don’t have a full understanding of life. Life is not defined be what you do, it’s defined by who you are and who you are then defines what you do. People mix that up sometimes.