Why I Wish I Was The Girl Who Wasn't Afraid
Love life because of the flaws, not in spite of them. Live life like that girl.
Scopio via Canva By Pankhil Kainth
We all know that girl. Her hair color changes more frequently than the seasons, she rocks black lipstick in the summer, she travels around town without her phone.
If she has an opinion, she will let you know. That girl won’t gossip about you behind your back, she’ll tell it to your face.
She will disappear for six months to teach dance in Zimbabwe. That girl is a story you listen to disbelievingly. That girl’s life is a series of adventures. She lives every day to the fullest without giving a damn about what others think.
Here are some of the things that you can learn from her.
You can't please everyone.
We can’t be the person everyone expects us to be. And everyone, literally everyone, will have an opinion about you.
It’ll happen as you are walking your dog, as you’re playing Zelda, as you are volunteering at a seniors center. I can guarantee it’s happening as someone reads this.
If they have made up their mind not to like you, nothing is going to change it. Opinions are as old as mankind itself and we often care far too much what other people think of us.
That girl knows that at the end of the day, the only opinion that counts is that of herself and the people who love her.
Hating is an age-old pastime. That girl knows how to get rid of people who are dragging her down. She makes friends, she loses friends. She moves on. At the end of the day, they respect her for not taking anyone else’s crap.
It’s all about the climb.
That girl probably knew that life was all about the journey and not the destination before Miley Cyrus crooned it.
You know you’ve heard that statement before, maybe even pinned it to your vision board. But have you truly acted upon it?
You can have the perfect car, the perfect house, the perfect family, and yet there will always be something just beyond your grasp. You may even spend your whole life putting the pedal to the metal, trying to reach that “destination” before your peers.
Before you know it, life is over. No one will be left to remember how fast you reached your goals.
That girl knows that the future is just moments of today put together. She’ll go skydiving, build a treehouse, and write a book.
That girl doesn’t want to remember what she did, but how she felt. She won’t worry if life doesn’t take a preplanned path. She’s fearless, she's fierce, and most of all, she's alive.
Stop holding in your emotions.
We are all born to be passionate. Some of us ignore it, some of us forget it. We lose the energy and free spirit we had as kids.
That girl is always brimming with overflowing energy, the sort that attracts people to her. Her excitement makes others excited. She is courageous not because she has no fears, but because she can’t let anything hold her back from her desires.
That girl is the girl I want to be.
She is in no way perfect, she makes countless mistakes. She may even be unlikable to many. Yet she is living instead of saying that she had lived a life.
Take a leap of faith, try taking the path with no guarantees. There are no wrong turns. When you embrace the unknown, the unknown will embrace you back.
Don’t live your life waiting for the perfect someday. Accept that life is not perfect, you are not perfect, you are human, and being human means that it’s okay to be a mess.
Love life because of the flaws, not in spite of them. Live life like that girl.
Pankhil Kainth is a writer and contributor to Unwritten whose work focuses on lifestyle, friendship, pop culture, and relationship topics.