I think it began in high school.
When going to Jenna’s sleepover on Friday night with one BFF, four girls you type of liked, and three girls that really bothered you was the very last thing you wanted to do.
When you were in Steph’s basement on the Saturday while you all drank wine coolers and warm beer, getting “wasted” and ending up kissing the wrong guy in Steph’s brother’s bedroom because you couldn’t find anywhere else better.
This is when those four walls that you now call your childhood bedroom started to feel like a box you wanted to get out of. The adolescence life after this you lived began to feel slightly like a constraint, as if the four walls you surrounded yourself with were caused by choices you didn’t make and ones you would not make yourself. Sometimes, you could find yourself feeling stuck inside a world that you didn't create, and you were keen to begin your personal.
This is when you grow up just a little and enter your 20’s, where life is an adventure. At least, this is what it's supposed to be.
You make some college friends which are just the right amount of wild and completely serious about their futures as you are. You ditch that top school boyfriend that was far too “on and off” that you had the you’re-a-dick speech perfected. And in between chapter readings, you plan via text to your hunnies the very best weekend you will have, and oh do you ADVENTURE.
You spend most of your weekend hours either drunk as well as in small clothes, or in the nearest diner, drowning your memories of the toilet-seat-head-pillow and your bad decisions in your bacon, eggs and pancakes.
“WITH a Bloody Mary on the side please.”
A new four walls start to form. The ones where you seem like the same-old, same-old just isn’t good enough anymore. This is when I told myself I wasn’t ready to stop. I wasn’t ready to let four walls stop me from going anywhere. Your 20’s are this rare stage in your life where you will likely only have four walls stopping you, no balls asking when you will be home to make him dinner, and an option to make the most of it.
I took every opportunity I could to see more of the world I lived in. I took jobs across the country, I studied abroad, and even at home I managed to join new societies, clubs, and something that meant meeting new people.
The reactions I received from this type of behaviour started to become very worthwhile to me. I began to receive many comments, such as,
“I can’t believe you moved there to work on your own.”
“I wish I could do something like that!”
“How in the world did you get that job?”
It amazed me that a lot of people truly felt that trying of their four walls to try something new was something they couldn’t do, or something like that they had never imagined. Every person has the decision to change where they work, live, play, imagine and breathe. Every person can be brave, step out of their comfort zone, and reap the benefits of this.
Whether this really is talking to a stranger at the table beside you in Starbucks, or flying to Thailand to taste Pho in real-time, I challenge you to definitely take a step out of your four walls.
Now, I’m finding that there will always be a new stage in everyday life and a new four walls and that not all of these walls are bad. Sometimes they are the walls of a new job we labored for, or the four walls from the new apartment we landed with our girlfriends, filled with all our favourite couch pillows, wine glasses, bran cereals, and avocados galore.
Although these walls bring us happiness, structure, and some balance to our wonderful and busy lives, I challenge you to definitely keep imagining those possibilities. Keep wondering what is beyond your four walls, keep seeking possibilities to explore and keep learning.
After all, you won’t get anywhere whatsoever if you have four walls and no balls.
