Your parents were once 19 with big dreams. Ask them what they were. You might be living some of them.

Parents arrive in your life already formed, which makes it easy to forget they had a whole period of not knowing what would happen. They had plans, most of which went differently, and some of which quietly turned into the life you grew up inside. You have probably never heard the original version.

Ask, and ask specifically rather than generally. What did they want at your age, what did they nearly do, what changed it. Most parents will talk for an hour if somebody asks properly, and very few people ever do.