We can all make jokes about this clip from The Notebook where Noah confronts Allie… In fact we can make jokes about The Notebook in general all we want, but if I am being serious, and I’m going to be serious for once, showing you this clip is the easiest way to explain how I face every single life decision.

Yeah.

Scary, right?

Why is it so hard to give ourselves what it is we want? Why are we so afraid that what we want is wrong? I feel like I’ve spent most of my life avoiding my intuition. Most of the time, I know what is wrong, what is right, what I want, but I avoid the answer for as long as possible. Torturing myself seems to be my favorite pastime. I know I’m not alone in this, especially for someone in their late twenties, but sometimes I do feel a little bit alone.

I constantly feel surrounded by people who have their lives figured out, their shit together, their passions in check. They’re pursuing what they want. They are dancing with their dreams. And I feel like I’m standing against the wall smiling and waving but not participating. Do other people notice that I’m standing at the wall? That I’m too afraid to make any real commitment, or sacrifice, or change?

I’m afraid to go for it, for anything, because I still haven’t pinpointed what I exactly want. “It’s not that simple.” How do you fully commit yourself to a skill, a talent, a passion, a dream, when you don’t have one? And I am being fully open and honest here, because I finally feel the need to be, when I ask: What if you haven’t found your calling yet? What if you’re just standing at the wall waiting for the right song to play? Do you stand and wait to groove or do you dance the night away hoping that something you can actually dance to comes on?

The latter sounds like the better choice, of course it does, but I still find myself against the wall. I’m scared that if I leave it to dance to one song, my perfect song will come on when I’m tired, or busy by the punch bowl. I don’t want to miss my one shot, but I don’t know what the shot is.

What a fantastic thing it must be to be born with confidence!

When will my fellow wallflowers and I except that perfection is not the goal of life, but that listening to what we WANT is?

In the end Allie takes a risk, by doing what seems to be imperfect at the time, and it makes her endlessly happy. That is, before she forgets everything and becomes Gena Rowlands at a nursing home. But for a time, it gives her what she wants, not what she thinks she needs.

Maybe all I need to do is start dancing with something and see where the night takes me…