If my life is a room, then it is probably the most untidy room I've known. Nowadays, it seems chaos is inevitable.
So much is happening all at once and my propensity for order or certainty is put to the test like a fragile tree caught in a storm. The tree is barely standing to hold its ground. When will the storm end?
Everything. Anything. Nothing. These are words I like to play with in my head, especially from a broad context.
I think everything will be okay, even though I know anything can happen, since I've accepted that nothing is guaranteed.
Sometimes, I feel nothing. Other times, it seems I feel everything, every single detail of every single moment. I can do anything I want. But nothing is free. Everything comes with a price tag.
Looked in a certain way, anything is a subclass of everything, which is also a subclass of nothing.
The Socially Constructed Timeline
At a young age, there's always this need or tendency to figure out one's life, to know what we want to do, have or be for the rest of our lives.
I'm not sure where this stems from or whether this was the case for previous generations, but the world today has become more complex, making it harder to have a singular, linear path.
This doesn't imply that figuring out one's life at a young age is impractical or impossible. But perhaps, the pressure behind it is a social construct, created by societal expectations and comparisons.
We're often bombarded with images of seemingly perfect lives online and in the media, which can make it seem and feel like everyone else has it all figured out.
If we let this get to us, then it leads to feelings of inadequacy and a pressure to conform to a specific timeline, even though everyone's journey is unique.
This pressure to have everything figured out by a certain age could be an idea created and shared by a group of people, and not something inherent to life itself.
Different cultures around the world have their expectations and timelines which is often quite different from ours. For example, the concept of retirement and the timeline for leaving the workforce can vary significantly across cultures.
In some countries like China and South Korea, it's customary to continue working well into the later years, while others have established retirement ages and social security systems to support older individuals.
Having one's life figured out at an early age and getting serious about it makes for an interesting life adventure. One can constantly and rapidly fluctuate between "I know what I'm doing" to "I have no clue about what I'm doing" and vice versa.
Perhaps, detaching from the collective and focusing on individual growth, exploration, and trying new things throughout life, instead of fixing on a single path at a young age, could be just as valuable, if not more.
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