Learning To Trust The Process of Making ‘Mistakes’ …
Having the courage to take risks and the different routes we take to ‘making it’ …
“I remember it like it was yesterday: my dad and I are driving home on a Sunday afternoon. I’m looking out the window, my eyes locked on this beautiful manor house I’ve been in love with since I first saw it. We drive by it on our way home every weekend, and my head follows the house like a magnet until it’s completely out of sight. I tell my dad that one day, I will buy a house like that one, complete with a stable full of horses and a swimming pool. He laughs nervously, shoots me a glance through the rear-view mirror, and tells me not to keep my hopes up – dreams like that, after all, are impossible to achieve. I’m six, and even though I don’t show it, I feel my heart break a little bit.
My dad is a protector, a hard worker - he’s kind, cautious, and absolutely terrified of me not playing it safe in life. I know he never meant to shatter the hopes and dreams of a six year old girl that sunday afternoon, but he was scared of me being disappointed in the end. He has longed for peace and stability all his life, and that’s what he wishes for his kids, too.
I would listen to my dad repeat the same disheartening message many times as I grew up, but luckily, my spirit was hard to break. I don’t remember ever thinking that maybe my dreams wouldn’t come true, that perhaps my dad was right and the manor house wouldn’t be mine - I just looked at him and thought ‘well, here’s someone who doesn’t understand’. Whenever we drove by the house and I repeated the same thing, challenging him to disagree, I wasn’t wishful-talking; I was certain that it would happen. My dad just didn’t know it yet.
After high school, I chose a bachelor’s degree my dad didn’t approve of in a too-far-away university, and a few years later, a bunch of jobs he didn’t find promising or secure. But whenever I defied his orders or made risky decisions, I also convinced myself that the only way to prove I’d been right was to succeed. To not fail, no matter what. Fighting against the current, after all, can get tiring after a while - especially when you feel alone in a new city, and have your life decisions questioned every time you answer a phone call from home.
“Without even realising it, I was suddenly on the path to the reliable, predictable life I’d been so afraid of. Everything I’d ever wanted – the creative career, the exciting life, the beautiful house - seemed completely out of reach.”
Showing my dad (and, if I’m being honest, myself) that I’d made the right choices became more important than taking the necessary risks to succeed. Suddenly, I was terrified of failure - losing a job, realising I’d made the wrong decision, wasting money or time or energy in any way. If those things happened, then I’d have to admit I should’ve listened to my dad from the beginning. So I learned to think like him: the only way to be absolutely sure I would not fail was to aim for what had always been safe.
Without even realising it, I was suddenly on the path to the reliable, predictable life I’d been so afraid of. I found myself at twenty-two, with a job I didn’t care about, not knowing where to turn to or what to do next. Everything I’d ever wanted – the creative career, the exciting life, the beautiful house - seemed completely out of reach.
A few weeks before my twenty-third birthday, I finally decided to make a big change and quit my job without a plan. It was a calculated risk – I had enough money to support myself for about a year, and I intended to find a new job in a few weeks’ time, but it was still terrifying, and I didn't tell my dad about it until I’d been already unemployed for a month. It wasn’t a decision I could discuss with him, or ask him about; I knew he would give me a list of reasons not to do it. But I needed that uncertainty in my life if I wanted to find my way again.
Quitting my job without knowing what would come next was one of the most exciting, empowering things I ever did. Mistakes became a part of my life as soon as I quit, and I’ve been making them ever since. I started a business, which has been a major fail up until this point (well, I’m working on it). I’m trying a bunch of different things at once, not quite knowing what will take me to where I want to be, but letting my instinct and creativity lead the way. Now that there’s nothing to lose, I’m failing left and right. And it feels right.
In the past few months, I’ve learned that making mistakes is an essential part of living life, taking risks and fighting for what you want. I welcome them with open arms, and I wouldn’t trade a safe job for all the missteps I’ve been taking. If, a few months from now, I realise quitting my position was the biggest mistake of them all, then I’ll learn from it and I’ll go back. I can always go back.
I know my dad flinches every time someone asks him what I’m doing, and I know how worried he is. But he’s also starting to trust me. To accept that my path is my own, and while he might want to protect me from the world, there’s nothing he can do if I’m determined to experience it fully, failures and missteps and heartbreaks and all.
I drive by the manor house once in a while, and I still believe it’ll be mine one day. My plan is to buy it and give it to my dad, so he can have a beautiful place to live in once he retires. I can already imagine him looking at me through the rear-view mirror, as we wait for the gates to open for the first time, hardly believing that some dreams do come true, after all.”
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To see more from Marta you can find her on Instagram at @litulla or read her previous submission for The Insecure Girl’s Club, I Left Everything Behind and Moved to Paris For Two Months: This Is What I Learned.