Demand to be someone’s something either a yes or a no, but never a maybe.
A lot of people are going to tell you that young adulthood is going to be the best period of life. You are young enough to still carry the idealism and energy to do a lot of things in life, but you are also old enough to know how to go about doing the things that you want to do. Your young adulthood is practically a real-life ad for Red Bull.
For a lot of young adults however, they often struggle with coming to terms with their real feelings and emotions. They dive into different hobbies, interests, and pastimes thinking that these will be enough to fill that emotional void in their lives. Some of them will even try to find a sense of fulfilment in their lives by getting into relationships. Now whether or not these relationships turn out to be good ones, it would be delusional to think that they would be enough to actually make a person feel complete.
So even though these people were promised that young adulthood would be the best era of their lives, they will end up feeling cheated. They will start to wonder what those people were talking about when they said that young adulthood was the best.
For the most part, young adulthood is essentially the repetition of early childhood except you have more money now. You are thrust into a world that you’re only slightly familiar with and you’re expected to perform at your best every single time. Essentially, you go back to the fundamentals of living, except you’re doing it on a slightly grander scale.
But you would think: We didn’t have to deal with heartbreak when we were young. How is young adulthood the same? Well, to burst your bubble, you did have to deal with heartbreak when you were young. You were heartbroken whenever your parents didn’t buy you that toy that you really wanted. You were heartbroken when you found out that your grade school crush didn’t have a crush on you. You were heartbroken when you failed that exam that you really worked hard for. You still experienced heartbreak when you were young. They were just different forms of heartbreak a lot different from the kind of heartbreak that you experience now that you’re older.
And you ask, where does heartbreak stem from? Why does it affect both kids and adults alike? There’s a fairly simple answer to that question and it surprisingly manages to elude a lot of rational people. Hope is the cause for heartbreak. You were hoping that you would eventually have your parents purchase you that toy that you really wanted. You were hoping for an A on your exam. You were hoping that your crush also had a crush on you. It’s the same now. As a young adult, you still have hope in you. You hope that your boss eventually notices how much work you’re putting in at the office and decides to give you a raise. You hope that the relationship that you’re in is the real thing and that it lasts. And when these hopes don’t come true, you are devastated. You are heartbroken the same way you were heartbroken when you were younger.
But there is one thing even worse than heartbreak and that’s uncertainty. That’s one thing that you experience so much more often now as a young adult than as a child. When you were young, you were always told either yes or no. You always had strong beliefs about everything and everyone around you. It was mostly black and white for you. But now, everything just seems all too complicated. And that’s when all of the uncertainty creeps in. You get into some kind of a relationship with someone but you’re not entirely sure that you’re together. Your boss drops hints about giving you a promotion, but the nuances are all too blurry. This is where hope kills you when it is prolonged to the point that makes you uneasy and uncertain. You would much rather be told no than maybe because with maybe’s you continue to hope. When you are forced to bear with uncertainty, it can make you nervous and anxious. When you are told no, it might not be easy, but at least you can accept the reality and you can try to move on. With maybe’s you are just too reluctant to move on. You need that definitive answer but it always continues to elude you. You would just much rather be rejected than continue to be led on like this.
So when you’re trying to pursue a love with someone, never allow yourself to become a mere maybe because you already lose in that situation. Demand to be someone’s something either a yes or a no, but never a maybe.
