I recently had a realization: we, as humans, seem to stress over every step or transition in our lives. Is that really worth it?
When we are young, some of us feel pressured to do well in school, to fit in with everyone else, have the right clothes, the right lunch box or school bag, find your very own friend group, and feel like we belong.
Then it’s time to do something after high school. We’re hounded with questions like “what are you going to do after graduation?”, “have you been accepted to a university yet?”, “what are you going to do with your life? what’s your career plan?” So we get stressed about finding something good enough to do, or getting accepted into our “dream university” and not wasting our time.
Then if you get into university, you keep stressing out about getting grades, getting all the right extra-curriculars in to fill up your resume nicely, getting all those internships and research opportunities, making sure you have a job lined up for yourself, etc etc.
From my observations, these worries never end for some people. Because then you get worried about things like climbing the ladder, finding a partner, getting a house, maybe the ability or financial safety for having kids, raising them right etc etc.
And then probably complain about your knees and back pain as you get older and reminisce about them “good old days”…
The point is, at every stage of life, there are a million things to worry about. And if you’re going to be worried about every single thing all the time, then in my opinion that kind of stress is not worth losing your perspective for seeing beauty in life and actually pausing to enjoying it.
Time will keep passing anyway. It’s true, sometimes you do have to worry about things in a way to take on responsibility for making the right decision for your future, or for matters of importance- whatever those may be based on your judgement. But because there is so much room for complaining about small things in life, and that clouding your ability to enjoy life as it is, I think it would be wise to tone that stress down as much as you can afford to.
Someday we will all die. It will be a sad thing to look back on your life through a lens of worry and stress, always trying to take the right steps for your future but enjoying none of it. We need to deliberately practice finding joy in the moment so we can make happy memories to hang on to in hard times, or to simply reminisce about 🌻
Faiza 