peaceful chaos

sometimes I start these posts with an anecdote, or by being curious about who’s reading this, or diving straight into a perspective about myself, but what if we changed it up…

well… a person I used to know used to tell me how they felt behind, like everyone was ten paces ahead and that because of that fact, they didn’t feel like they were doing enough… worse still, they started to feel like they weren’t good enough. I remember always asking them, ‘well, why?’ and the immediate response was, ‘well, look at everyone else…’

that friend was just one example in what I think is a large pool of people who feel the same, and ironically, we feel alone in that feeling when… I hate to break it to you, we are one of fucking millions (that’s my guess, by the way).

I sometimes wonder, why exactly do we feel like we are behind? and I mean, in reality, when we say ‘I feel behind’… behind what?

we’ve all heard the phrase ‘comparison is the thief of joy’ because, I mean, we all know we do it. we compare ourselves to others, and it’s hard not to… I mean, even if you don’t want to admit it, you probably do; I know I can be bad for it.

but what’s funny (and a phrase I used to tell this friend regularly) is that you’re just seeing the highlights, because that’s what people put across… you are comparing your ‘behind-the-scenes’ and day-to-day life to someone’s broadcasted bragging or highlight reels of their lives. so no wonder we end up thinking we are behind, even if we are doing the same things or living a similar lifestyle.

another factor that comes into this is the fact that we typically won’t compare ourselves to people completely different from us, like a 70-year-old pensioner comparing themselves to a 23-year-old finance fanatic… we compare ourselves to people who are proximal to us, people in the same age category or background as us. what does that mean? we start to compare where we are versus where they are and feel behind if we are ‘inferior’ to their position, because we are comparing against an external yardstick.

it’s like we sometimes forget that biologically, our prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that is responsible for personality, decision-making, and moderating social behaviour) literally hasn’t finished developing until our mid-twenties, yet we expect ourselves to have a ‘finished’ version of our lives for people to view and admire before we’ve even finished developing it.

if you really think about it, even if you aren’t comparing yourself to others, you still might feel behind because there is a weird concept that developed over the years of a social clock (coined by bernice neugarten). the concept basically talks about an internalised timeline that tells us when we should be hitting certain milestones in life like our career, marriage, or independence. so the irony is that ‘falling behind’ only actually exists if we compare our internal cadence to the external clock that feels like it keeps ticking by.

if you’ve had to spend your energy ‘shattering cycles’ and growing a certain area of your life, your timeline will look a little different—but is it a bad thing? you might have built a stronger foundation for the future than someone who started building on the quicksand of a s*** headspace.

put it like this: someone who had to deal with the grief of losing someone close to them might be focused on rebuilding their life around the new format it needs, while that career-driven person has less holding them back from pursuing their career goal. and I mean… would you ever judge that person who experienced loss for slowing down to heal before heading on? no. so why should we take our mental health any differently?

look…different things can happen in your life and hold you back or hinder you from the things you had your sights set on, but I think we might need to let go of our pride, or even thinking about what anyone might think of us slowing down, and just do it…

you could think of it like going on a group hike. if you were to take a tumble and hurt yourself, would it be better to take a rest, heal up, and look after your wound, then catch up to the group later able to continue and climb with them? or would it be better to fight through the pain, continue with them, but make your pain worse. ultimately not being sure if you can even finish the hike at all? I wouldn’t say it’s worth it, but that’s because I think I’m pretty good at letting my pride take a back seat sometimes…

I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe we should ignore this ‘social clock’ because ,to me at least, it’s almost starting to feel like a scam…I mean it’s an external yardstick for your life, a formula that might not apply to your equation so what the f*** are we doing using a broken method?

so when you feel that pressure of being ten steps behind… or that you are at the back of the pack because you are healing from your tumble or building that strong foundation, why don’t we just enjoy our journey and let others walk ahead?

because eventually… everyone needs to stop and catch their breath, and when they do, we can only hope that you might be exactly where you need to be with them. not because you hurried or rushed through something you might regret rushing, but because you didn’t leave yourself in the dirt to get there.

so here’s the question… are you going to be running the race for them, or are you gonna be taking each step for you, no matter the pace?…