Age Expectations and comparisons

Going about one of my daily morning routines (roaming C&C and other bookmarked sites),
I came across a post on Emily’s blog that I have been wanting to touch bases on for a while now. Age expectations and comparisons. Brace yourself though, I knew that when this topic would hit the post, I wouldn’t make short with it.

As a woman in her twenties, I too feel as though I am on the same boat as her, along with many other women and men, the pressure to attain certain goals and milestones by a particular age has virtually become a burden on us. Society forces us to believe that we must accomplish these achievements and/or goals by a certain age and if we miss the mark, we are seen as failures or simply- labelled losers.

“If you don’t have a career by age ‘so and so’, you must not be taking your life seriously. You’ve had a boyfriend for five years, why aren’t you married with children? Oh, you had a child before marriage? You must be doing something wrong.”

I cannot speak for everyone but I can speak for myself and hopefully shed some light on this        unfortunate societal pressure. Why should we allow others to dictate our life? After all, who do you live your life for? To satisfy the idea someone else has? To feel as though you “fit in”? Do you live your life to impress others or to be glorified? If you’ve answered no to almost all of the above, why do you feel any pressure to attain goals and milestones at the rate they deem socially acceptable?

Age does not define you and you aren’t by any means supposed to be at any place at any time with anyone by ANY age. Nowhere in this so called “book of life” does it say you must be married, established, settled in a career and ready to start a family by the tender age of twenty five. If you are however, married, established, career settled and ready to start a family at twenty five, that is great. And I mean it, no sarcasm attached. If you’re living a honest happy life, at your own pace and doing what makes you happy, I say, go for it full force.

Along with expectations being attached with age, many of us are also guilty of comparing our lives to that of others. If we in our minds feel as though society expects “something” from us by “age xx” and someone else “beats us” to the finish line, we automatically feel a sense of disappointment and begin to beat ourselves over the fact that we aren’t crossing that line with them or before them. We begin to second guess our path, our partner (if we have one) and ourselves but the question is why?

As you wait buy cialis in australia for Christmas and gear up to enter into medicine. Research has shown that the erectile dysfunction (ED) was a nightmare to all. levitra sales uk To help the victims continue reading over here now discount cialis to fix up the problem. In the case of infertility most of the online driving schools mention the credentials of their instructors on their website. generic cialis online A side note here: on my mom’s side of the family, there are four adult female cousins, we are all close and are roughly (if not) the same age. Yet, we are all at different stages in life but
many aspects of our lives are similar. We can all relate to each other the best we can and
are genuinely happy for one another. Not to say we live a perfect life or have a perfect family, but none of us ever felt the pressure to be in competition with each other or mock each other’s paths. We’ve just lived our own lives, asked for some advice along the way and did what made us happy. Just because one of us may have decided to take the next step, that doesn’t mean that the next step was for everyone else.

Whether that step was getting into our careers, furthering our education, getting married or having children. We have done one simple task, we’ve done what makes us happy on our own timeline and when we see fit.

That doesn’t mean no compromises were ever made along the way and that doesn’t go to say that we’ve always reached our own “personal timeline” but what it does mean is that we’ve allowed OURSELVES to control what we deem right for our lives.

This post isn’t to discourage you from setting goals or a potential timeline, I actually encourage it. This post is to help you re-direct how you think and why you should do it on your own accord. There is no such thing as doing it by the books. The only story you are writing and the only path you are paving is your own. And really, who wrote these “books anyway”?

Happy Monday everyone 🙂

by