Serendipitous World of Consequences and Reactions

 I have recently been blessed by the crippling question of what I am going to do with the rest of my life. It is a struggle that many college kids face, however, I feel like I am surrounded by cliches, not lessons. These quotes that have now even permeated the Internet (looking at you Tumblr) do not even come close to consoling me about the fact that I feel that my only hope of success at this point is to meet a nice Jewish boy and settle down. However, I have begun to find solace in unlikely places. Last night, while driving home from the movies, I had a moment. There is no word to truly describe it but it was a moment of realistic optimism, and a sense of fear, that was perversely exhilarating. It was a moment of divine intervention. I was the only driver on the highway, and every song that played on the radio was almost handpicked to inspire me out of the slump that I seem to be stuck in. In that moment, there was no thought of the past, no thought of how my past could haunt me, but rather a clear, straight-forward view of the immediate future. 
There is a distinct difference between the immediate future and the present, although the two may come seconds within complete overlap. There a completely different mindset. There is a sense of hope in the immediate future, albeit sometimes groundless. The immediate future is normally a head space reserved for the paranoid and problem-solvers, while the distant future is only for absent-minded dreamers. I found myself, earlier this year, stuck in the distant future. I was trying to problem-solve for 6 months at a time, which is enough to drive someone insane. This takes us to the cliche sayings that are supposed to console someone is such crisis. "There is nothing to fear except fear itself." Fear is the root of misguidance, the core reason why we start to distance ourselves from the present. The present is a hard world to live in, so when fear penetrates the present we must look to the future for hope and sanity. However, fear can drive us away from our lives, our reality. It can make us desperate for the hope of something else, whether that be better or worse. It is our to conquer this fear and strive to live in the present that is the truest of challenges. So for now the open question is, how does one fix the mistakes of the past, accept the hardships of the present and limit how far their mind creeps into the future?