For a long time, I thought growing up was all about certainty.
As a kid, I used to watch adults with this quiet kind of awe. They seemed like people who’d found their place in the world, who could make decisions without hesitating and handle problems with a calm that, to me, felt almost magical.
I was convinced that once I hit a certain age, the same thing would happen to me. That there was some exact moment, some invisible line, and once I crossed it, I’d finally know who I wanted to be, where I wanted to live, and what direction to give my life.
Then the years went by. And I never found that line. What I discovered instead is that growing up doesn’t mean having fewer questions. It means learning to live with new ones. And often, ending up with even more.
I thought security was a destination
For the longest time, I pictured peace of mind as a place you eventually arrive at. I thought that once I landed the right job, the right city, or hit the goals I’d set for myself, everything would just click into place on its own.
I imagined a future version of myself who would finally stop doubting, stop changing her mind, stop wondering if she was on the right path. Reality turned out very different.
Every milestone I hit opened up a brand new question. Every big decision forced me to reconsider something that, just a moment before, had felt like a certainty. And at first, that terrified me. I felt like I wasn’t sure enough, decisive enough, adult enough. Now, though, I wonder if it’s actually the opposite.
The questions change right along with us
Some questions belong to a specific chapter of life. Others keep evolving right alongside us.
At twenty, I used to wonder what job I’d end up doing, whether I’d get to travel as much as I wanted, and whether I’d find the courage to build a life that actually felt like mine. These days, those questions have made room for new ones.
They’re questions without a definitive answer, and maybe that’s exactly the point. They force you to pause every once in a while, look inward, and check whether the direction you’re heading in is still actually yours.
I've learned that changing your mind doesn't mean losing yourself
One of the things that took me the longest to accept is that changing your mind isn’t a sign of inconsistency. And I change my mind a lot.
For years, I thought choosing a path meant you had to follow it all the way through, even once it stopped feeling like you.
Then I realized people change constantly. Dreams change, priorities change, the way we see the world changes. It would honestly be strange to expect our choices to stay identical forever.
When I think back to who I was a few years ago, I realize she wanted very different things than I want today. And I don’t feel nostalgic about that. I feel grateful.
Because that version of me made the best choices she could with the tools she had at the time. It’s partly thanks to her that I’m here today, with different questions and a slightly kinder way of looking at myself.
The best things were never part of my plans
There’s one thing I notice every time I look back.
The experiences I remember most fondly are almost never the ones I’d planned down to the last detail.
They’re the trips booked last-minute. The conversations that happened by chance. The people I met when I wasn’t even looking. Even a few changes that scared me at first ended up being essential to becoming who I am today. It’s funny.
I spend a lot of time organizing, planning, trying to keep everything under control. It’s part of who I am, and it probably always will be. And yet life keeps reminding me, with a certain sense of irony, that the things that matter most almost always slip right past our plans.
Maybe that’s exactly why I love traveling. Every departure reminds me there’s always room to leave space for the unexpected. And more often than not, it’s the unexpected that turns a trip into a real memory.
Maybe growing up means making peace with uncertainty
These days, I’ve stopped caring about becoming that person I imagined as a kid — the one who always had the right answer and knew exactly what to do.
Instead, I’d rather keep nurturing my curiosity. Keep asking questions without treating them like failures. Accept that some answers will show up in a year, others in ten, and some might never show up at all.
There’s something incredibly freeing about giving up the need to have everything under control.
Because it’s exactly in that space where certainty ends and the possibility of change begins that life still manages to surprise us. And honestly, thinking about it, I think that’s exactly the place I want to keep living in.
