Lately I've been thinking back to a conversation I had with my most excellent mentor, Dr. Wright. It was around three to four years ago, and I was talking about my confusion over people my age already getting married and having kids. He told me that no one ever felt ready, but that the only way to be ready is to do whatever it is you want to do - like getting married.
At the time I thought that was impossible. How can you do something you're not ready to do? The closest thing I could figure at the time was that it was similar to reading Plato as an eighteen year old - you don't feel ready to engage with him, but by doing the reading you made yourself ready to read dense philosophy.
Now, however, I understand even better what Dr. Wright was talking about, and he was 100% right (as I often find the wiser, mentor types are). Although I will make the subtle distinction to alter his advice to say: you will never feel ready, but you can be prepared.
By this I think of my nephew who wants to be on Broadway. He currently lives in California and goes to a good JC out there. However, he posted on Facebook that he wants to apply to a university out here in New York and move out here to pursue his dreams. He was asking for advice and, via private messaging, we talked about his desire to get out to the City.
The main thing he mentioned that was keeping him from immediately going out here for school was the financial aspect. I completely understood - and do understand - that conundrum. Wanting to move out, but worrying about having enough money to do so is a serious concern. But I ended up telling him the same thing, more or less, that Dr. Wright told me.
That you will never feel ready. You will never feel like the amount that you saved is enough. You will never feel like your paycheques will cover everything. You will never feel like you want to leave everyone you know and love back home. It's exciting, but it's also scary because, of course, you've never done something like this before. But that doesn't mean you should let that stop you. Because you will never feel ready until you take the leap of faith off the cliff.
However, that doesn't mean you can't be prepared. By this I mean you can be smart about taking the leap. You can try to budget out a reasonable cushion of savings, for instance (I didn't move out to New York with only $10 in my pocket and a one way plane ticket like in the films). You can research costs ahead of time and message people who have done what you want to do. There is a way to be reasonable prepared for success without ever feeling ready. And I think this is the best you can hope to do in life, because like Dr. Wright said, you will never feel ready.
Although lately I've also considered situations in which this is swapped, or the rare instances where you feel both prepared and ready. I think pre-teens and teenagers feel ready for things they aren't always prepared for - like moving out on their own or being in a long-term committed relationship. This doesn't mean that all pre-teens and teenagers are, but I would assume most don't understand all the consequences of their actions (like most parents tell them and experts talk about all the time). And I think this is a normal part of being a teen.
Conversely, after university, I find that most of my friends are reasonably prepared for what the world will throw their way, but almost all of them don't feel ready to go out and start their lives as adults. Of course, like when we were pre-teens/teenagers, that doesn't stop us from pursuing what we think is the right thing to do. However, that doesn't make it any less scary.
In my own life, I think the only time I've felt both prepared and ready is when I went off to university. I was more than ready to leave my small hometown and I was also prepared to do so by the time I was a senior in high school. But that's the only time I can remember those two things aligning.
It's weird to think that if you had told me then, that in only five years I would graduate top of my class from university with a film degree, stay in the honours programme, live on my own in New York City, and work as an executive assistant at HBO, I think I would've been even more eager to begin what I would've perceived as a new and better life.
But now I realise how much in life you go in blind and the thing that makes you "prepared" for anything that comes your way are the friends and family that care about you (and a little elbow grease). And honestly, a City is not always more exciting than the country.
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