By Miguel Angeles
I have no idea what I’m doing.
There—I said it.
It’s an admission that I face daily, and I think it resonates with everyone. Every day, I wake up and try to piece together what feels like an endless list of things I should already have figured out. How to interact with people, how to manage my finances effectively, how to act when faced with certain challenges—the list is exhaustive, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It feels like navigating a forest with a beaten-up compass.
There’s this constant pressure to figure everything out. To have a 10-year plan. To always act right in everything we do and to have a sense of where you want to go, who you are, and what you want. We grew up thinking that uncertainty is a sign of weakness.
But what if we were mistaken?
What if it’s okay not to know?
What if it’s okay to be naive?
Do we really need to figure everything out to live fully?
Like everybody else, I have always been striving to have a perfect life. A well-planned life and a successful career path—it’s frustrating. In every action I take, life seems to stir things up, making me feel lost. It’s as if life is making me write my own story, but it has a predetermined ending, like I’m expected to know the means to a preferable end. I don’t. I’m just a college student making his way through his junior year. Am I missing out on life by stressing and striving to answer everything?
Maybe the real weakness we could ever have is the mindset that we need to figure everything out. After all, life experiences are not linear, and everyone experiences life differently. What if figuring everything out means confining ourselves to set parameters and not exploring and experiencing the beauty of life?
As F1 driver Niki Lauda once said, “I’ve been through a lot, and I realize the future can’t be controlled. I’m not worried. You can always learn to overcome difficulties.” Maybe this is something we should understand. Instead of fighting the feeling of not knowing, we sit with it; we enjoy it. Instead of seeing nervousness as a red flag, we recognize it as a sign that we care. That we are trying to live life to the fullest.
We don’t give ourselves enough credit for how much we’re already doing—just by trying. Just by getting up when things feel uncertain. Just by asking questions and searching for something real in the middle of the noise.
So what if the goal isn’t clarity or a well-defined life, but courage. Not a perfect plan, but a little persistence. And maybe, just maybe, not knowing what you’re doing is exactly what you’re supposed to do in the first place.
