Demolishing the Stages of Life

In your 20s, you should be traveling. You should be getting internships. You should be meeting your lifelong friends. You should be getting that college education. You should be making money to pay off that college debt. You should be going on dates. You should be finding your life partner. You should be starting your career.

Wow, do I feel behind.

(Pinterest)

There are so many different life-defining goals that we should be prioritizing. Some people say we need to focus on our education, immersing ourselves in the information that we are gaining to help us in our career. Others say our top priority should be our experiences. We need to take advantage of every opportunity to make friends, explore the world, make connections and memories that will be the best of our lives. Another view would prioritize work, making money and gaining experience through internships, because we will have so much more success in our career if we have that on our resume. Also, we need the money to make sure we can pay off our loans accordingly and not be in debt after college. Still, someone else would say that we need to prioritize finding a partner, that this is the time we're supposed to begin a relationship that is going to turn into marriage.

Wow, do I feel behind.

So, what superhuman powers are the 20-year-old gods distributing that allows us to give all of our effort to each of these expectations equally? As sad as it makes me to say it, we are not gifted superpowers, and on top of this devastating news, all of these expectations end up being what holds us back from enjoying any of it. We can never fully enjoy doing any of these things when we feel like we are failing at the others. We compare our own life with our peers and see everything that they have which we do not. Our peers hold the same perspective when viewing our life.

Wow, good point, but ... I still feel behind.

What if life was not broken down into stages and expectations like shown here. Life could just be life. We are all experiencing things, achieving goals, not achieving others at different times. It is so easy to get caught up in the idea that everyone else's life is going at the right pace, yet your own life is behind. We need to stop comparing our life to others' or to this list of expectations. There is no time limit; there is no pressure except that which we allow.

We've set life up into stages and what we should have achieved after completing each stage, but what if I want to demolish these stages? (Yes, demolish is a strong word, but that's how I feel.) What if we say there are no stages of life, and life is just life? We are all humans with our own trajectory, or lack thereof. It is our own life, and we can allow it to move at its own pace. We need to stop determining the value or success of our lives based on what we should have already accomplished or figured out by a certain stage. Instead, we can view the lack of achieved expectations as something we still get to look forward to. So, you haven't found your life partner or haven't done any internships like you want to - those are exciting parts of your life you can look forward to taking place at any time.

Wow, I'm not behind.

None of us are behind in life, and we need to remind ourselves of this.