Do you remember being younger and life just felt like there were endless possibilities and opportunities, and everything was open and so much of your story was unwritten?

I'm lucky in this sense because most of my youth was pretty bleak and dead-end. There was a very limited range of options for me (it seemed) and not only were my expectations low but other peoples' expectations for me were low. They weren't being cruel, they were just living in a bleak world too so they actually thought of their expectations for me as being pretty high. Until I was about 20 I was convinced that the highest achievement I would accomplish in life would be to maybe be the manager of a gas station (not that there's anything wrong with it, it's just a very specific option).

Sometimes I wish I'd had more optimism as a child but it kind of set me up for happiness in later life since pretty much everything, even the bad stuff, is a massive step up from what I thought I'd be going through.

/r/RedditForGrownups Thread