My Life’s Motto

 

A fitting motto since this was my senior quote in high school and now I am a senior in college.

Everyday we make decisions. Some of the simpler, yet still important ones, would be:
What time will I get up? Will I rock the new jeans I bought, or wear my favorite sweatpants to class? What do I want to eat for breakfast?

All of these decisions come with options:
1. The right choice,
2. The easy choice, or
3. The wrong choice (which is often synonymous with the easy choice.)

I could decide to wake up late, skip breakfast, and wear my sweats to class; but that’s a bad habit to fall into. The right choice would obviously be to wake up at a reasonable hour, eat breakfast and make myself presentable for the day, sweats or no sweats.
Very often we do things out of convenience (easiness) but those decisions often affect us later. The right choice may not always be the easy one; sometimes we may have to let our pride go, silence our egos and learn to take responsibility for our own choices and actions.

It can be hard, but if you have a motto you can grasp onto, it helps make the choices clearer.

For me, this motto helps me to remember what it is that I want for myself. Am I making my decisions based on what other people want or expect from me, or am I paving my own path? When I do things, I want to be doing them because I want to, not because of someone else’s influence. I want all my decisions and plans to reflect me one hundred percent. Doing this isn’t easy. We are always being influenced by those around us; friends, family, and sometimes random bystanders.

There were times in my life when those close to me expected me to do something just to make their lives simpler, but this took away from my own happiness. I had to learn to pave my own way because, for me, that is the right thing to do. It is my life, these are my choices, and my responsibilities. If I am going to suffer consequences, let it be because I made a bad call, not because I chose to blindly follow. If I am going to succeed let it be because I chose to work for a goal and I reached it on my own; not because I was forced to complete a task, or because I piggybacked off another. I figure, if I make my own choices, my heart will be invested in whatever it is I decide to do in life, and being passionate about what you do has always been a reoccurring theme in my life as well.

It’s only right to give credit to the person who wrote the wise words of my beloved motto, and some of you may feel that it is cliche, but J.K. Rowling really hit the nail on the head with this one. And of course, Dumbledore is the one who spoke these words to Harry Potter, the boy who was trying to pave his own path in life, and not blindly follow the one that was laid before him.

In tribute, I will also say that I am a giant Harry Potter nerd, and I am proud of it. Harry Potter has been a huge part of my childhood and I know, growing up with the books and the movies, that the series has positively influenced my life.

P.S. Anytime I hear, read, or think of the word “motto,” I have a sudden urge to burst out in song: “Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase! Hakuna Matata! Ain’t no passin’ craze. It means no worries, for the rest of your days! It’s our problem free philosophy; Hakuna Matata!”