The terrifying freedom of having no idea what you're doing with your life.

This article originally appeared on Ayushi Thakkar's Substack, milk and cookies. Sign up here.

When people talk about "finding direction", they say it like it's a missing charger: if you look in the right drawer, you'll eventually pull it out. Mine hasn't shown up, and I've checked every emotional cupboard I can think of.

At this point, I'm starting to suspect the charger never existed, or maybe it did, but someone handed it to a past version of me who left it in a bag I no longer own. Either way, I've stopped pretending I know exactly where I'm heading, because most days it feels like I'm just narrating the next step out loud and hoping it sounds intentional enough to pass as adulthood.

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What makes this whole thing mildly comical is how often we convince ourselves that everyone else knows what they're doing.

Someone gets a promotion and, suddenly, we think they've unlocked the secret manual of life. Someone starts a podcast and we assume they've found their "calling." Someone says they're moving cities and we imagine they felt a strong internal pull rather than a mild sense of restlessness mixed with poor impulse control.

Almost every adult looks decisive from the outside, but if you zoom in closely enough, most people are stitching their lives together using a combination of guesses, luck, and pure stubborn repetition and yet, when it's your turn to feel unsure, it somehow feels like a personal failure.

It's bizarre how quickly uncertainty becomes shame.

Instead of saying "I'm in transition," we say things like "I'm behind" or "I'm late" or "I'm lost," as though life is a metro map with one correct route and we accidentally got off at the wrong station. But not knowing your exact direction doesn't mean you're stuck, it just means you're paying attention. The people who cling most tightly to a single plan usually do it out of fear, not clarity. It's easier to follow a rigid path than to admit you're still figuring yourself out.

I think the real discomfort comes from realising how much freedom we actually have. It's easier to believe life is scripted, that you only need to follow the cues, complete the milestones, earn the badges, and eventually everything will feel coherent. But the moment you understand that your path is mostly self-invented, and that no one is coming to assign you a role, the room suddenly gets bigger and scarier at the same time. Freedom can be overwhelming when you're used to certainty pretending to be stable.

There's also the subtle fear of wanting the wrong things.

Most people don't talk about it, but a lot of life confusion comes from worrying that you'll build a life that doesn't fit you at all — that you'll choose something for the optics and regret it later, or that you'll choose something for passion and it won't sustain you, or that you'll choose nothing and stay in a perpetual loop of "figuring it out".

Wanting something is far more vulnerable than pretending you don't care, which is why so many people stay in the in-between space longer than they need to. It feels safer to be undecided than to name a desire that might disappoint you. But there's a softness hidden in this stage of life that no one ever celebrates.

When you don't know exactly what you're doing, you start paying attention to what actually feels good instead of what looks good. The pressure lifts long enough for curiosity to get a word in. You try things because you feel like it, not because they belong to some master plan. You start noticing what pulls you in without effort — the topics you linger on, the people who energise you, the tasks you do without procrastinating, the dreams you keep returning to even when you pretend not to care.

This is the stage where identity reshapes itself in ways you only recognise years later. Direction rarely arrives as a lightning bolt; it shows up through a collection of small preferences you didn't realise were forming a pattern. The book you picked up randomly. The project you did for fun. The conversation that stayed with you. The sudden dislike for something you used to tolerate. The growing attraction to something you once ignored.

Meaning doesn't come from knowing your destination — it comes from noticing the things your future self will build a life around.

I've also learnt that purpose becomes much less intimidating when you stop treating it like a lifelong contract. You don't need to know your ultimate path to take the next honest step. You don't need to commit to a 10-year plan to explore the thing you're curious about today. Wanting something for now doesn't make you flaky; it makes you responsive to the version of you that exists at this moment instead of the one you imagined years ago.

Most people only find their "calling" in hindsight anyway — they follow a series of small, sincere choices until it starts looking like a story. And the biggest relief in all of this is realising that not knowing what you're doing does not disqualify you from building a good life. Confusion isn't a moral flaw. Unpredictability isn't failure. Uncertainty isn't a lack of potential. It's just the part of life where you stand in front of a thousand possible doors and take your time before walking through one.

You're not waiting for the universe to speak; you're listening for your own voice in the noise.

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The terrifying part is the openness. The freeing part is also the openness. You get to build a life that doesn't have to resemble anything you've seen before. You get to change your mind. You get to try things that might not work. You get to want something different from what you wanted last year. You get to grow into someone you haven't met yet.

And that's the point: you don't have to know where you're going to move forward. You just need to stop holding your breath long enough to take the next small step.

The map isn't missing — it just hasn't been drawn yet. You draw it as you go.

This article originally appeared on Ayushi Thakkar's Substack, milk and cookies. Sign up here.

Feature image: United International Pictures.