“The Unknown”

“Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

By: Caroline Turley

It’s a daunting question, and completely impossible to know the correct answer. Most

people don’t want to think about it. They like their “now,” their current bubble where the most

important thing is what’s happening in the next five minutes. It’s something I think about from

time to time, and to be honest, it scares the hell out of me. Will I be married, have a family,

working my dream job, living in a big city, or a suburb? To be honest, I don’t even know where

I’m going to be in the next week. A catastrophic event could occur, I could receive a lifechanging

phone call handing me an incredible opportunity, an extremely influential person could walk into

my life. The truth is... the future is completely unknown. It’s a crazy thing, the unknown, and it

influences the way people act, both good and bad.

17 years of schooling, and now I’m finally rounding out my last year in college. All of us

seniors are looking around wondering where the time went, scared to say the big “G” word. It’s

almost taboo, bringing up graduation, no one wants to face the wilderness of the real world until

we have to. We are all keeping firmly rooted in our Marist bubble right up until we have to move

our tassels from one side to the other. Our bubble is what we know and love. It takes no longer

than five minutes to go and see your friends while your biggest worry is most likely classwork

and your weekend plans. I will admit, it’s nice here, it’s comfortable, and I think that’s why so

many of us don’t want to leave. However, I also think many of us are scared for the future and

its’s implications.

“Fear of the unknown” isn’t just a term of phrase, it takes the drivers’ seat in decision

making. We make decisions based on what we know, we don’t want to take a leap knowing

there’s a possibility that things could go sideways. In our heads, we reason with ourselves to

justify our decisions: marry the person who is a safe bet, keep the job you hate because who

knows if you’ll get a new one, take the safest option. I have definitely thought this way

throughout the course of my life. I don’t want to lose control over what could happen in the

future. Until I realized I never had that control to begin with.

“There are two ways you can view the unknown: terrifying or exciting. That’s it. And the

choice is up to you.” It hit me when I was having a conversation with my brother, who is now six

years out of college. I went on my whole spiel, venting about all of the things I had to do and

expressing my senior depression, until he uttered those exact words. I stopped and realized that

to an extent I was living in fear of the unknown. I didn’t want to leave my perfect college world,

failing to recognize that I was holding myself back from embracing the excitement of the future.

Thinking that you can control your future is absurd, yet so many of us lose our grip on

reality. Trying to ride the coattails of the “now” to predict what the future entails. It’s impossible

to know what the next week holds in store, let alone the next ten years, and that’s something that

we have to cope with. You can take the “fear of the unknown” route, after all, it is your life...

But I am telling you it won't serve you well. Excitement for the future is what completely opens

up our world to new possibilities. It unravels a plethora of options at our fingertips. It fills us

with hope, gratitude, and positivity. It’s time for use to get excited. Get excited for the future and

all that it encompasses. We can’t change what may happen, but we can change the way that we

perceive it.