500 Words a Week - Your Wilderness Years

These are your wilderness years.

These are the years when nothing makes sense, and everything seems interesting. Like there are many different paths you can take, yet you’re unsure if you want to go down any of them. It’s a time of feeling lost and uncertain, one we all experience.

It’s a time of immense doubt, when you aren't sure if anything you are doing will work out or you feel like you may be wasting your time as others seem to breeze through this forest of confusion we have found ourselves in. You may have stumbled upon what you feel could be your calling, yet you have no idea how to make it a career or a life.

Your wilderness years are a time that in the future you will look back on fondly and reminisce about. Yet at the moment, it feels impossible to know how we will ever get through them.

These years aren’t easy, they are a time of constantly second guessing ourselves and feeling a deep uncertainty about who we even are. They are the existential dread years as we come across the reality that it’s up to us to figure out our life, no one else can do it for us. 

They are the years for taking a bet on ourselves. To stare into the dark chasm of the abyss and keep moving forwards anyway despite the crippling fear we feel.

We are blind to the significance of what we are going through at the time. We think it is all meaningless. No concept of why we are doing what we are. This is the wilderness. This is the time in our life where we figure out who we are and what we want to do. We are trying to find where we should be. This takes time, far more time than we once thought.

Before we were a beautiful fluffy bunny, unaware of the perils of the forest as we were showered in warmth and carrots. Then suddenly we have found ourselves in the woods. Forced to fend for ourselves, to determine what is safe and what is not. Our once clean and fluffy coat has become marred with the realities of the world. We have a choice to make, do we try to run back to where we came from. Seeking safety in what’s comfortable, or do we embrace the woods we find ourselves in. Do we move forward through the uncertainty and confusion around us in the search of better pastures?

Think of any of your favourite characters. They have faced this time. The movies show this as a montage, with uplifting music, never lasting more than a few minutes as our hero breezes through this time. Yet when we are in it, it seems like this time will never end. That we will never see the end of this doubt and uncertainty. That we will forever be lost in the dark.

If we just keep going, keep finding the strength and courage to show up day by day, we will emerge from the woods. With our fluffy little tails intact.

The wilderness years are the cost for finding out who we are and the life we want to live.