Carefree. I like that word. Carefree. The more I think about it though, the more ways I find of interpreting it. Now, I think it’s actually quite a complicated word.
So I google-defined it. “Carefree: adjective. Free from anxiety or responsibility, e.g. ‘we were young and carefree’.”
Well that word couldn’t be any more relevant to my life right now. For the past two years my sole wish was to be carefree. I was in my final two years of a stressful degree and I wished nothing more than for it to be over, and that I didn’t have to constantly stress over all these assignments that I couldn’t seem to do well in. Two years of constant stress inevitably took its toll and now I’ve been a graduate for just over a week and surprise, surprise – still not carefree. Instead, I’m left with this anxiety and feeling of responsibility that I can’t seem to shake off. ‘We were young and carefree’. I’m always hearing that association. Well I’m young, but I feel a bit lost. ‘Carefree’ just doesn’t seem to want to find me.
Let’s rewind a bit. When I first read that word on the Daily Prompt, I was drawn to it. My immediate interpretation of the word was a powerful visual one. The image just popped into my head (almost in a carefree way). It was me, with my arms spread out like wings, almost flying off a cliff side, jumping into a beautiful sea. It was sunny, I was happy, feeling light and.. you guessed it – carefree. So in that sense, carefree, to me, is almost synonymous with being fearless.
Then, I looked at it differently. Carefree = not caring. I remember a time when I didn’t care. But I wasn’t happy. It was the bad, numb kind of not caring. There we go, carefree can’t be all that good then. Caring is important. Caring is a form of love. A life of apathy is, in my opinion, the worst there could be.
So, as with anything, there has to be a compromise. I’ve definitely grown out of my whole ‘black and white’ view of the world. It’s all just different shades of grey (not a reference to 50 shades – never touched that book). No one wants anxiety, but everyone wants some form of responsibility – to feel needed, a purpose. This is probably why multi-millionaires are always constantly working to be bigger and better. No one wants to be totally carefree. We all like a bit of stress (not too much), a bit of excitement, something to work towards. Then we want a couple of weeks of holiday a year where we can act carefree, but then we can go back and resume our ‘care-full’ life.
Just a thought…
Olive Megamean 