Everyone's Journey is Different

I was sitting down at a staff meeting and I just happened to look down at my thighs which somehow prompted me to say to myself, "I am 33 years old." I compared my legs and thighs to that of my mom's at 33 years old because when my mother was 33 she had just married my dad and had me at 34. I couldn't believe it I said to myself. Where has the time gone? How come I haven't accomplished much more in life than I have now? All throughout my childhood I had wanted to be married with a family by the time I was in my 30's, I always thought I would have a thriving career as an attorney and I always swore up and down that I would NEVER work for my father. Well, as the old cliche goes, never say never. As the years passed till my junior year of college I signed up for the LSAT class to prepare myself to apply for law school. Well to make a long story short, I was so turned off by what I was learning, mostly having to figure out the tree game part of the test and also my teacher helping dissuade me even further from the profession that I ended up canceling my LSAT registration date. So here I am, with one more year left of college: I majored in liberal studies which consisted of psychology and human services and I had a minor in Pre-law. I initially majored in political science because the majority of students who want to go to law school major in that but I hated political science so I switched my major right away. I was stumped initially as to what I wanted to do with my life now that college was coming to a close and I no longer had any desire to go down the path I thought I wanted. It was so long ago that I do not even remember the exact moment when I decided to become a teacher. I wish I did remember when I had that epiphany but unfortunately I do not. After I received my B.A. I spent the whole semester you guessed it..... WORKING FOR MY FATHER while rigorgously looking to get into graduate school for education.  I value education and find it to be priceless and it is every child's birthright to receive the most valuable education along with a very supportive environment. This shapes the child's future for the rest of their life. I also have a great deal of empathy for children because I struggled a great deal as a child and I find that being a teacher is very rewarding and how many professions are there where you have the power to make such a positive impact in someone's life? As I had predicted, it was a nightmare working for my father while going to school at night. I was at the front desk of his apparel merchandising company in midtown and at night I began graduate school a few blocks down. Somehow I made it, it took me 3 years and 3 state exams to become a NYS licensed teacher in addition to all the chaos I put myself through by working in a toxic environment run by my dad. After receiving my teaching degree and licenses and gaining enough experience teaching across the board I now realize teaching is not for me. I know why I wanted to do it though, it sounds like a right fit for me in theory but not in practice.  It is way too stressful to put it mildly and I feel like I'm being fed to a pack of wolves in a classroom ranging from 22-32 kids and even more challenges I will not go into. I even recall one day after school screaming on the phone to my dad telling him how much I hate teaching and I do not want to do this anymore.  

Isn't it part of human nature to compare yourself to other people your age who look like they have it all? We are social creatures not animals and I find it a natural state of being to look on the other side of someone's grass and to see that it looks greener, that it looks like he or she has a thriving career at my age and has already been through the motions of getting situated in "adult life" consisting of being immersed in a career, married, having bought a house and starting a family etc...It is very easy these days with social media to "peek into someone's window" and check out their current life status, it is only literally a mouse click away on a computer screen. Of course most people over sensationalize and make believe their life is a fantasy for everyone to see but that is a different story. My point is is that it is very tempting to so easily see what everyone else is up to, I find it to be very tempting and hard to resist sometimes. Even if some people don't give into the make believe fantasy type of life and plaster it publicly, you could still easily Google someone's name and see someone's basic information on their search results i.e. where they live, if they are married, what they do for a living. I mean everyone knows Google pulls up almost everything about the person in question, almost like a virtual sleuth. LinkedIn, The Knot, White Pages, Facebook, Instagram, and so forth...  

It took me years just to move out, I had friends who moved out shortly after college. I can't help but remember this one example that I used to compare myself to: I had just turned 24 and unexpectedly out of nowhere I met this handsome guy who had it all. At the time I did not see it this way, because when I was 24 I had just started graduate school, still living at home and still acting like I was on Spring Break. But looking back in retrospect now that I have matured nearly a decade later, this guy was my age, he lived in a beautiful one bedroom apartment and embarked on a career as an investment banker. He was already worried about his finances such as paying the rent for his expensive apartment and being very unhappy at his current job. Me on the other hand never would've been able to relate at the time, although him and I were the same age (ok he was 4 months my junior!) I was still in the phase of acting like a child. It took me years to get to the point to where he was then. I used to beat myself up over it, because yes I had a major thing for him to put it mildly and if circumstances were different him and I would've been compatible. It was almost as if I picked him out of a catalog and I met him randomly nearly 4 am drunk at a bar. But I have come to terms with my past and know it was not meant to be and not to dwell on what could have been. I harped on that for a while though because now he is married with a family of his own but I now understand that not everyone is on the same path, everyone's journey is different and I have to trust the process.  It took a lot of self reflection and work on myself to be content as to where I am in life right now and I know I have come a long way and not to compare myself to anyone anymore, there are many different stories people have and we are not all the same.  Everyone has a different journey but it doesn't matter because at the end of the day we end up getting to our destination eventually, even if we had to go down a different road.