The Road Ahead.
“Comparisons are easily done once you’ve had a taste of perfection.”
The opening of Katy Perry’s classic gives us a little insight to life — Stick with me, I promise this is going somewhere!
There are many phases in life where we see people get stuck. We have the ‘Peaked In Highschool’ stereotype, we have the ‘Midlife Derailment’, which both seem to derive from a love for longing.
To begin with, lets deconstruct what the ‘Peaked In Highschool’ stereotype really is. In school - whether that’s high school, or uni, or some other form of organization where you are a part of a big group that comes to an end - there are attachments formed. You gain friends, like the ones you can remember from school. Your reputation much more easily permeates through these truncated groups in comparison to the big wide world. Which in turn, changes the labels which you can place upon yourself. Ever heard of big fish, little pond?
The big thing with ‘Peaked In Highschool’ — even if it happens later in life, is that we get attached to these things. The friends, our bodies, yet one of the biggest un-talked about factors is… the nourishment. Not only did our friends understand what we were all going through, but our family did as well. People would invest in you, and nurture you. Shower you with love and tell tall tales of how you could do it, and how proud you could and or would make them.
People don’t speak of this. It’s like subconsciously we allow others to age out of our belief in them. Like all of a sudden that person who missed the 7:15am train can’t hop on the 8:30.
Potential is latent and present in everyone, throughout their entire lifetime. And I think that some people get stuck at ‘Peaked In Highschool’ because they are no longer nourished as they were, and they get mad. They begin to feel alone, and when the world gives up on you, it’s easy to give up on the world.
Midlife derailment. This comes in many forms but is largely similar to the ‘Peaked in Highschool’ stereotype, where attachment is the big elastic band that people get slung back on. It can come in the form of divorce, sometimes a big injury that changes your physicality, or a lay off from that job you spent years in school trying to get.
It’s in the midlife where many people lose their physicality, and start to think of themselves as over the hill. You begin hearing, “When I was ‘x’ years younger etc, etc.” Science has become a bit of double edged sword in that sense. As research and articles come out — we seek to confirm the beliefs we have read or heard from other people. These things and stories start to become self fulfilling prophecies that don’t always necessarily serve us. Be mindful of what you allow yourself to believe.
A Love For Longing. It seems that as a society, we have this love for longing. We long to live lavish lives, to always have more than what we do. There is space to want more for yourself. There are ways to want and work towards things you don’t have, but this obsession and love for longing stops so many people. If we are constantly looking outward and not at our footsteps, we tend trip ourselves up. Bring yourself to the moment and realize you can choose where you go, but it doesn’t help you to constantly be looking at the things you want, putting yourself down along the way. You’re perfect and great right now. That doesn’t mean that that’s all you’ll ever be, because you have more within you. But that does mean that you are worthy in every stage of your life, during every step of your journey.
All this to say, there is more road ahead and that’s what matters.
As we get older, people start to worry that there is more road behind them, than there is ahead. While that is true for some, that’s not what matters. What matters is that there is still road ahead. There is still life to live, and the only limits in life are the ones you place on yourself.
Stay warm,
dc
