It’s hit me just recently: this is the rest of my life. This awareness has arisen because I’ve had to face a few realities lately.
I’ve led my life thinking it would look a certain way: high school, uni, work, husband, house (that I’d build with a view into bushland), things to own, kids with interesting names, package holidays to Bali (OK, now I’m just being dumb…you get the point). I just assumed, and over the years the milestones guided me, they were my motivation, as they are for many of us.
When I got to one milestone, I used it to prepare for the next. Everything was a run-up to the next thing. I didn’t have to think too much about whether it’s what I wanted. Many of us don’t. It’s so easy not to. The path is nicely worn. Of course you get married by thirty. Of course you’ll factor in kids at some point.
Life can trip along fairly easy like this, while ever you’re nailing the milestones. You can live a whole life this way, blindly ticking them off, never thinking about where it all leads. Until, perhaps, you miss a few milestones.
But I’ve been having accept of late that some (many) of these milestones won’t (can’t) be ticked off by me. It’s not all due to unforeseen circumstances. If I’m honest, I’ve chosen this path I’m on. Over and over. Without realising. Slowly I’ve been steering myself off to the left.
Either way, it begs…when the milestones are gone, what are you left with?
Illness or a setback or a wakeup call or crazy sets of life circumstances land people at this point. Life is stripped back. You’re unceremoniously pushed from the conveyor-belt.
And then what?
I’ll tell you what: you’re left with a
frighteningly boundless freedom to choose what the rest of your life will look like.
No milestones, no rules, no norms, no sitcoms to use as barometers of what’s “normal”. Just your self.
Mother friggen scary. And lonely. But mother friggen fresh, too.