One of the better parts of getting older is realizing how much of life you were making harder because you thought there was a correct way to do it.
You spend so much of your younger years trying to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. What kind of career makes sense. What success is supposed to look like. Which relationships you’re supposed to keep. What you should own by a certain age, where you should live, how much money you should make, whether you’re behind, whether you’re doing enough, and whether everyone else somehow received instructions you missed.
Then you get older and slowly realize a lot of people were just talking.
That’s it.
Some of the rules you were worried about weren’t rules at all. They were expectations. Traditions. Somebody else’s preferences. Things people repeated so many times that they eventually started sounding like facts.
And once you realize that, a lot of bullshit starts losing its grip.
You stop needing everyone to understand your decisions. You become less interested in proving that you’re right. You notice which relationships only work when you’re doing all the work. You realize that being good at something doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it forever. You figure out that changing your mind isn’t evidence that you didn’t know yourself before. Sometimes knowing yourself better is exactly why you changed it.
Even embarrassment changes.
There are things I would’ve obsessed over years ago that barely survive the afternoon now. Somebody didn’t like something I said. I wore the wrong thing. I tried something and wasn’t immediately good at it. I changed direction after telling everyone what I planned to do.
Okay.
Life continued.
That’s probably one of the biggest breakthroughs. You realize how many things you thought would be catastrophic were actually just uncomfortable.
And uncomfortable passes.
The funny thing is that I don’t think getting older necessarily means you finally “find yourself,” either. That makes it sound like there’s one finished version of you hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered.
I think you get better at recognizing yourself.
You start noticing what actually makes you happy instead of what should make you happy. You figure out what drains you, what you’re willing to tolerate, what you absolutely are not, and which parts of yourself you were shrinking because they didn’t fit neatly into whatever environment you were in at the time.
Eventually, doing what you want stops feeling quite as rebellious. You want to change careers? Change careers. You want to go somewhere alone? Go. You don’t want the life everybody assumes you’re supposed to want? That’s useful information.
Obviously, adulthood comes with responsibilities. “Do whatever you want” has limits when mortgages, families, jobs, health, and other human beings are involved. But responsibility and conformity aren’t the same thing. You can handle your responsibilities without building your entire life around other people’s expectations.
I think that’s the freedom people are actually talking about when they say they care less as they get older.
It’s not that you stop caring. (sometimes đŸ˜‚)
You get better at deciding what deserves your care.
Your time starts feeling more real. Your energy starts feeling finite. You become much less interested in spending either one performing a version of yourself that makes sense to everybody else.
Maybe that’s what finding yourself actually looks like.
Not one giant revelation where everything suddenly makes sense, but years of removing things that don’t. Bad assumptions. Old expectations. Other people’s definitions of success. Versions of yourself you’ve already outgrown.
And underneath all that, you’re still changing.
You’re just finally making more of those changes on purpose.