The idea of planning your life almost always feels easier than not. Maybe your story sounds a little like mine, graduate from high school, head off to college, meet my soon-to-be life partner, graduate from college, dive into corporate, and build until you get to the top, get married, have babies, then live happily ever after. Add in the white picket fence, the baby gender reveals, neighborhood game nights and so forth. The point is it’s always easier to have some kind of control over your destiny and what will happen next, or at least in the moment it feels that way. It feels good knowing that when you work hard things will work out, it feels good knowing when you find the love of your life and have kids that the journey will be complete, you will finally be complete. But what we forgot to tell each other is, that sometimes your life can go differently. Truth is, you don’t have to have your life together by 30, well at least I don’t.
See I knew from an early age who I was as a person and who I wanted to be in the world. I had simple goals, go to college, become a writer, get married by 25, have 2 kids before 30, and well you know the traditional route. I mean how could I honestly dream any differently when my entire life has reflected that true success looked “like this.” Until one-day things changed. Now, this isn’t a horror story to scare you out of planning, by no means is that the point of this. The point is to say, it’s ok if plans change, it’s ok if you change, it’s ok if what you thought your life was supposed to look like changes. This is more like a reminder to not be hard on yourself and hopefully save your 20s from being ruined by the false perspective of your life is worthless without those things.
When I was in my early 20s I dreamed like a girl in her early 20s, why? Because it was all I could see, it was all I had ever known. I couldn’t imagine a life that gave me options or choices, because I never had them before. So when you turn 21 what do you do? What 21-year-olds do, then when you turn 25 you can finally rent a car by yourself, then what? Yeah, that’s how I felt about it all too, what more do I have to look forward to after 25? I’m not married, nor do I own a home, my car is 10-years-old but still amazing, my friend group is small but loyal, going out on the weekend isn’t much fun to me and don’t even get me started with dating. It’s not horrible, it’s more like a constant reminder that I haven’t “figured it out, still,” but it doesn’t have to be.
Someone once told me, “Decisions are expensive,” and in many ways they were right. But they’re always fun and exciting, both freeing and insightful. Because if you really think about it, every decision that you make from this day on, is a reflection of the person you are in this exact moment, but not of the person you will become. Becoming doesn’t have to feel like a drought, if decisions are as expensive as they say, why not live this life as if our 30s weren’t the end, but the beginning. Now I don’t know what you’re going through, where you are, nor your current conditions, but what I do know is, if you’re approaching your 30’s or even beyond your 30’s, this message still applies to you. Decide from this moment on to give yourself permission to change, to experience. Not to fear, not to deny the life you live currently, not to ruin opportunities, but to live each day as if you get a chance to, because you do.
So you turn 30 and you’re still not where you want to be, instead of deciding to reach for shame or guilt because it’s familiar, instead ask yourself. What decision do I want to make today? What do I want to do? Who can I take with me on this journey? You see the good news is, you get to decide how you want to live this life, you’ve always had the choice, you just could’t see it yet. So go ahead, take your pick on where to start first, and make the decision to go for it.
