I’m graduating from college and I’m happy, but I’m also sad. I got offered a job in the specialty I wanted in the city where my family is. But now I have to leave my friends to go start my life. What if I’m making the wrong choice?

What should I do?

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First of all, congratulations on graduating from college and landing a job in the specialty of your choice!  I think it’s important to stop for a moment and recognize what a win this really is.  This has, no doubt, taken lots of hard work so even though you are understandably stressed about this first job, where you will end up and how your life is going to go, it’s also important to recognize and celebrate this massive accomplishment.

You have a degree that you will now have for the rest of your life!!!

You have a job offer!  Landing that first job can be challenging.  So YAY!

What you’re expressing is the inevitable and never-ending quandary of life.  Am I making the right choice or the wrong choice?  Will it be good or bad? 

Just like you’re experiencing right now, isn’t there always good and bad about every situation?  The truth is that nothing is ever all good (a 10 out of 10) or all bad (a 1 out of 10), and the only thing we can do is accept this inevitability.  In fact, the art of living a good life is in learning to embrace this middle ground, resisting the urge to categorize any and all experiences as either “good” or “bad.”   These buckets are too simplistic to work for practically anything in the real world.  So what you’re facing sounds like, well, reality.

Let’s talk about expectations.   If you expect anything in life to fit neatly in the “good” bucket or the “bad” bucket, you are suffering with unreasonable expectations.  There are no such buckets – in fact, instead of buckets, think of everything as more being in a trough with good all the way on one side and bad on the other, and most things being somewhere firmly in the middle.

But anybody that tells you that they have no expectations in life is either an exceptional Buddhist monk or a liar.  We all expect things or anticipate things or hope for things.  It’s nearly impossible to live completely in the moment, even as much as we may wish we could do so.  Think about your new job – maybe you’re really excited about this job, and your expectations are high. Isn’t that good?  Yes…and no.  If your expectations are in the “good” bucket, you might be setting up for failure.  Keep everything in more of a trough.  In fact, while optimism can be healthy and good, a little optimism will go a long way. 

You absolutely need optimism because you will tend to find what you’re looking for.  So, if you go into a situation expecting it to be largely good, then your brain will naturally gravitate to those experiences that match with what it is looking for.  And you’ll be more inclined to find those good things. 

But a little optimism goes a long way, and if your optimism leads you to believe this will be a 10 out of 10 experience, that this will be the best job in the world, that you will never have another day of unhappiness again, you are likely to be disappointed.  Even gravely disappointed.  Because nothing is perfect.  Having sky high expectations will increase the likelihood that your experience won’t quite live up to the hype of your imagination. 

On the other hand, having low expectations or being pessimistic is likely to have the opposite, corollary effect.  If you are sitting all the way in the pessimistic or “bad” bucket, you will go into this new part of your life expecting it to be terrible and boring and believing that you won’t meet new people and your life will never be good again.  Because you believe this, you risk looking for proof of this every day and you’ll be more likely to see every interaction and every person through this lens of badness.  But having tempered low expectations, knowing that it won’t be perfect, can be strangely helpful, in the sense that you will be leaving room to be pleasantly surprised when you meet some nice people.

So just like anything, the sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.

Think of your life as a path

I noticed that you used the phrase “to go start my life.”  I hear this a lot from people, but the truth is that your life started many years ago.  Words matter and using this type of language might subliminally set your mind up to negate anything that came before, discounting entire parts of your life.  Don’t underestimate any of the parts of your path.  Your life isn’t just starting unless you’re just being born.  Instead, it’s continuing.  Think of your life as a long, sometimes easy, sometimes hard, but always beautiful hiking path.  The truth is that you start on that path when you’re born.  The people you are with will change over time, and there will be some steep sections and some easier sections, but if you take the time to stop and look around, there is always some beautiful scenery along the way. 

And frequently you will run into forks in the path and be faced with making a choice to go this way or that way.

The reality is that while these are absolutely forks in the path, and we must make a choice, often they are only small detours heading us in the same direction and we will eventually meet up with the main path again.  One isn’t right and the other wrong, they are just choices, alternative routes, all leading in the same general direction. 

I used to feel like my life would finally start when I reached one milestone or another – graduating from high school, graduating from college, climbing out of a mountain of credit card debt, having children, etc.  But thinking this way perpetually keeps you in a state of not enjoying the part of your life you’re actually living currently.  If you find yourself enduring this stretch, anticipating the future, thinking that the “real” trail starts just up ahead, then you will not be experiencing the beauty of the section of the trail you are on right now.  Each section counts.

The most important thing, no matter where you are on the trail, is to pay attention and follow the paths laid out for you.  This does not mean that you need to do everything that everybody wants you to do.  Far from it.  If you’re paying attention to your path, enjoying each one, you will generally know when you are on the right path and when you have veered off onto a path that might not be great for you.

For you, this first year on the job will absolutely be a new part of the trail, but it’s not the beginning. 

Enjoy it and resist the urge to look too far ahead, anticipating future hardships and stress.  Looking ahead, you might see a section that looks too steep for you, and you might start to fret about that part of the trail.  But the truth is that by the time you reach each section of your particular trail, you will find it traversable.  Somehow you will be prepared for each section once you reach it.  So just take it one section, even one step, at a time.

Because the reality is that we are usually ready for what comes next in our lives.  Life has a way of preparing us.  I know that when my children were nearing the end of elementary school, the teachers would sometimes try to warn them of how much harder it would be once they were in middle school.  And then middle school would come and it wouldn’t seem that much harder.  But near the end of middle school, the teachers started warning them of how hard high school would be, but then high school was completely doable and fine.  And the high school teachers started warning of how hard college would be, and so on and so forth.  But an elementary schooler would absolutely be overwhelmed by high school and a middle schooler would be overwhelmed by college.  But taken in order, each new experience was little more than just the next step. 

And the same is true for all of life.  The reality is that by the time you reach the next big hurdle, you are usually ready for it. Life inches you forward.  Even when we have big and massive change, we will be prepared to handle it.

The flowers aren’t necessarily more beautiful on the other section of the trail

So, just like I encourage you to resist the urge to expect too much (or too little) from what this next part of your trail will be like, I also encourage you to resist the urge to over-glamorize other paths you could have taken or previous parts of the trail that you’ve been on.  Our brains have a funny way of editing past experiences and making them seem better than they were.  We might gloss over the hard times, only remembering the good ones.  So don’t tell yourself that you already lived through the best times of your life, because that isn’t true.  Each section is both good and bad. 

Also, try your absolute hardest to not compare with other people’s situations.  Maybe you have a friend that chose to continue on to graduate school and you tell yourself that you should have done that as well, that your life would be better if you had done what she did.  That isn’t useful, so resist the urge to do that.  Telling yourself fantastical stories about the many paths you didn’t choose is just that – telling yourself stories that aren’t based in reality.  You simply can’t compare real, lived experience with the fantasy of what could have been.  Fantasy will always win that battle.

It’s easy (and, frankly, cliched) to believe that the grass is always greener elsewhere (or, in our analogy, that the flowers are more beautiful on the other trail), but reality is reality.  And reality is always a mixture of good and bad.  The fact is that what looks like greener grass from afar might be filled with weeds, and it often comes with higher water bills and time lost to maintaining it.  Everything is a trade off. 

And keep in mind that you always get to pick. You always have choices.  You are never truly trapped.  Even when circumstances are difficult, and changing would be a challenge, you still always have a choice.  So if you find yourself really lamenting a particular choice over a long period of time, you might want to reconsider.  Maybe you don’t need to go back to school, but your fixation on other’s paths might just indicate that you need a change of scenery.  That’s part of life.  You are the navigator and you always get to choose.

Optimist, pessimist or realist?  Who will you choose to be?

We make choices for a variety of reasons, and because we cannot always be in control of the variables at play, sometimes the path might be kind of laid out for us.  Call it destiny or the way things are meant to be or what-have-you, but sometimes we are kind of forced down a particular path.  For this section of the trail, sometimes all we can do for a while is make the best of it.

We’ve all met people who don’t know how to make the best of situations and these people can be draining to be around.  And we’ve probably all met people who make the most of even seemingly terrible situations. 

The wonderful reality is that we each get to choose which type of person we are going to be in any given situation.  Are we going to be the person that finds the good or the person who fixates on the bad?  You get to pick.  And always, always remember that even while you are “finding the good” in a particular situation, you can simultaneously be making choices to change your situation.  You are never stuck to forever endure bad situations with a positive attitude.

Overly optimistic people can easily cross over into denial or avoidance, mentally escaping tough circumstances.  And overly pessimistic people can easily cross into anger and resentment, adopting a victim mentality.  But being realistic, being willing to see things clearly and then making the best of the real situation is where the true gold is. 

Let’s look at an example:

Three very different people go on vacation to a foreign country.  As it happens, it rains the whole time they are there and the country is in political chaos, so many stores and restaurants are closed.

Connie is an optimistic person.  Her internal (and external) reaction is utter denial.  She refuses to acknowledge that anything negative is happening.  She insists that everything’s wonderful and that she’s having the time of her life.  She posts beautiful photos that edit out the chaos happening around her.  She refuses to let her vacation be anything less than perfect.

Fred is a pessimistic person.  His internal (and external) reaction is, “It’s just my luck…nothing good ever happens to me.  I probably jinxed this country just by being here.”  He stays in his hotel room, spending his time trying to change his flight to return home early.  He has no fun. All in all he is angry about his experience on this vacation and considers it a huge waste of time and money.

Katy is a realistic person.  She recognizes what’s going on in this country, and though she’s sad about the weather and the protests, she adapts to what is really going on around her.  She spends some time educating herself on the political unrest and becomes sensitive to the plight and the needs of the locals.  All in all she is grateful for her experience on this vacation even if it is altered from what she imagined it would be.

In a nutshell

I encourage you to live in reality, knowing that you cannot control the outcome in any situation, nor can we ever really know whether good things will turn out to be bad or bad things will turn out to be good. 

An old parable about a farmer demonstrates that you just never know the goodness or badness of anything that happens.

Once upon a time, there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years.

One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit.“Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically, “you must be so sad.”

“We’ll see,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it two other wild horses.

“How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed! “Not only did your horse return, but you received two more.  What great fortune you have!”

“We’ll see,” answered the farmer.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.  “Now your son cannot help you with your farming,” they said.  “What terrible luck you have!”

“We’ll see,” replied the old farmer.

The following week, military officials came to the village to conscript young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Such great news. You must be so happy!”

The man smiled to himself and said once again.

“We’ll see.”

So let’s go back to your question – you’re happy and you’re sad about this job offer because you will be back near your family and you’ll be leaving your friends. You worry that you might have made the wrong choice.  What should you do?  Just keep walking.  Don’t tell yourself stories, just do your best to live in reality and enjoy this section of the trail. 

Will it be good?  Yes.  Will it be bad?  Yes.  That is the way it is supposed to be.  You are right where you need to be, so all we can do is walk through life accepting where you are.