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I did the math again last night. You know the math. The one where you take someone else’s life and subtract it from yours and sit with whatever number comes out.
She got married at 24. He got promoted at 25. That one girl from school just bought a flat, and I’m still deciding whether today counts as “productive” because I replied to two emails.
Nobody tells you that adulthood doesn’t come with a deadline.
School had one. There was a grade for every age, a milestone for every year, a syllabus someone else designed so you never had to wonder if you were on track. And then it just stops.
Suddenly, you’re the one writing the syllabus, except everyone else seems to have gotten a copy you didn’t.
That’s the strange thing about comparing timelines. You’re never actually comparing lives. You’re comparing someone else’s finished milestones to your unfinished, very ordinary Tuesday.
You don’t see the panic before the wedding, the rejection before the promotion, the months of wondering whether buying that flat was actually the right decision. You just see the finished thing. And somehow, you measure your rough draft against someone else’s final cut.
Read more: Breakfast Babble: Why Everyone Is Suddenly Trying To Become The Best Version Of Themselves
I used to think “behind” was a real place you could end up, like a waiting room everyone else had already walked out of.
But “behind” implies there’s one road, one pace, one finish line we all agreed to sprint towards.
Nobody agreed to that. I definitely didn’t.
I don’t even remember signing up for the race, and yet I check the leaderboard daily like my name is supposed to be on it.
Maybe the point isn’t to catch up. Maybe it’s to realise there was never anything to catch up to.
Marriage isn’t a deadline. A promotion isn’t a deadline. Buying a house, having children, figuring out your career, becoming financially stable — none of these things come with an expiry date stamped on your forehead.
And yet we’ve somehow turned them into checkpoints, then convinced ourselves that missing one means we’re failing the whole course.
Maybe the timeline was never real. Maybe it was just a story we all quietly agreed to be anxious about together.
So I’m retiring the math.
No more subtracting her flat from my rent, or his promotion from my inbox. No more treating someone else’s milestone like evidence that I’m late.
If I’m on a timeline at all, it’s one I’m making up as I go. Which, honestly, tracks. Nothing else about my life has come with instructions either.
Sources: Blogger’s own opinion
Find the blogger: @diptisadh
This post is tagged under: breakfast babble, life comparison, feeling behind in life, comparing yourself to others, life timelines, social comparison, life milestones, adulthood, comparison culture, peer pressure, marriage pressure, career pressure, financial milestones, personal growth, life expectations
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