I believe life gives us all two choices, and both of them are hard.
1st choice
You can live an average life, start a family, work a 9 to 5 until you are old and then you might be able to live rest of your life enjoying yourself waiting for your time to come to an end.
Don’t get me wrong this is a very noble life, anyone who has the courage to put their goals and ambitions aside to help the next generation is always going to be better in my book than someone who made an extra $10k / year to buy their designer clothes.
The only problem with this is that you have to live with the fact that you know you could have been someone “better”. You maybe could have been an all star soccer player, but now you have to live life dealing with the pain of being a nobody, dealing with the pain of being nothing more than average.
2nd choice
You can work hard to make something of yourself, be someone that you can say you are proud of, be the best version of yourself, and live life with no regrets. Enjoy the fruits of life to its fullest.
A lot of people would say “Oh I want to with the 2nd choice”, that’s easy for a lot of people to say but nobody is willing to put in the time and work to achieve this level (including myself). To achieve this you have to sacrifice a lot, work hard, suffer, and life will have it’s ups and downs there will be times you wish you had picked the easier path.
My choice
Earlier part of high school I didn’t care I was fine with the thought of living an average life, but then I realized that’s the hardest choice someone can make. Living as an irrelevant human being knowing I could be so much more but rather I gave all of that for some “financial stability” and to “settle down”. Eventually, I realized, I needed to be more. I needed to be someone who my parents could say they are proud of, someone who makes all their sacrifices worth it. I am eternally grateful to my parents who worked so hard to put food in my mouth, who moved to the other side of the Earth just so I could have a better future, my dad who missed his mother’s funeral just so he could stay in the United States for ME, and more.