ChaoticJourney

Having it all figured out in your life- Is it really your self-awareness or about living up to people’s expectations?

Isn’t it ironic when people say your 20s are about figuring out your goals, your personality, yourself, yet at the same time you’re expected to have your path completely sorted? Get your degree, start a job, earn promotions, get married, have kids, and the checklist goes on. 

While the former is acceptable and works for some people, the latter is usually the more highly regarded achievement metric. Self-discovery is celebrated in words, and achievement is often measured in metrics. Life is not about choosing sides or deciphering right or wrong. That is completely absurd. Rather, it is about individuality, unique perspectives, and the way you see and reflect the world around you. 

More often than not, having a set plan is tied to reputation, especially living up to parental and societal expectations. Many do not mean harm or have ill intentions. Yet, sometimes good intentions can lead to actions that hurt people. These actions can affect children who have become adults. They are then capable of forming their own opinions and self-awareness.

We often forget the most valuable lesson that reputation is earned through an individual’s actions. It is not built on your child’s shoulders. Reputation is not tied to a pre-designed future in which they will not have a say. Yes, material things and money matter. They grant us access to buy stuff, which puts a smile on our faces. Yet, they are not a measure of success or achievement.

Accomplishments can never be weighed in numbers. They are found in how peaceful you are when going to bed. They are in whether you showed kindness that day. They are also in the choice to wake up in the morning despite having a hard yesterday. Simply choosing to wake up again is sometimes the hardest part of life and choosing it again and again is the greatest victory. 

This is not idealism or a far-fetched concept; it is a reality we should strive for and embrace. 

Parenting, after all, is the only role in the world that demands selflessness and acceptance. This is true even though it often goes thankless. Loving a child does not mean loving only when they follow your script, but you love your child ‘despite’ as they are carving their own journey. This in no way means excusing bad behavior or dangerous actions. But it does mean that relationships are not give and take. You cannot expect children to follow in your footsteps all the time and not carve their own niche. At the end we are raising a person, not a robot.

Children should be celebrated for having their own identity, opinions, and reflections- This is parenting done right. 

Because as soon as we think about relationships as give and take, we fail altogether as human beings. And this is where humanity comes to a standstill and we as a society become the worst version of ourselves. 

So here’s a call to action- stop forcing a person to have it all figured out. It is life, not a marathon and life itself holds the control, not us. Struggles are not failures, rather stepping stones to a journey unknown and mystical. Only after a long struggle do we find solace. We gain a sense of purpose. We learn about who we want to be, rather than what we ought to do the way people around us expect.

Don’t put people in a single box; the human mind was never designed for one role, one label, one path. We are allowed to have many hats, to evolve, to hold contradictions. 

Live and let live and embrace uniqueness without attaching it to reputation or expectations. The only thing worth figuring out is how to live with freedom, kindness, and compassion without reducing life to a checklist.