Is life passing you by?

Talking with a friend of mine recently, he said he felt life was passing him by, and he felt insecure about how things were moving. This raised an important question in my mind, why would he feel that way? why would he think to himself that life was passing him by?

This is a feeling we often get, It's easy to feel like time is flying without you ever noticing, today you are 20 and full of life, and before you know it you are 50 and already out of energy to do any substantial change, let's try to look into the origins of such a feeling and how we can combat it.

The simplest illustration I have for such a feeling is for you to imagine walking on a very long road (or driving), I use the illustration of a road because it usually has the same design over a very long distance, the road looks pretty much the same. Walking on this road over such a long distance and getting to the end of it, there is very little you are going to remember about this road, unless an accident happened, or you saw something out of the ordinary, there is very little you will remember about this road at the end of it all.

Our lives are similar to this road, we are doing pretty much the same things every single day and so thats why after a while when we come to a realization of where we are, we look back and wonder how time passed without us realizing, it's the same with that road, after a long distance you’ll look back and wonder how you got that far without noticing the time passing. That's where that feeling comes from, with a monotonous life, you won’t notice time passing by, simply because every day looks like the previous one.

This is what my friend was feeling, the emptiness of a monotonous life, he was trapped in the cycle of doing the exact same things, and so he couldn’t tell the days a part anymore.

What you can do?

Walking on such a boring and monotonous journey, you are sure to not see the time passing especially because your mind is focused on reaching your destination, you want to get there as fast as you can because you understand that there is nothing of interest on that road but what you are really looking for is found at the end of that road, that's why even unconsciously you don’t care about anything you see.

The way in which you make that journey more memorable will be for you to have milestones, points during that journey where you do things of value to you.

This means concretely that in your life you should plan for milestones, which can essentially be things you want to either accomplish or do during your journey, things which take you out of the routine you are already in. This means that you need to plan for the different milestones in your life, things you want to do after 10 years, 5 years, 1 year, 6 months, 3 months, 1 month, each week etc and with these you are sure not to see life passing you by because in your mind you had already planned for everything, all you will know is where you are already on your journey.

To continue with our example, if you plan for milestones along your journey after maybe 25% of the journey, 50% of the journey and 75% of the journey, at each milestone you will know exactly how far you’ve gone in that journey, you won’t feel lost because you know where you are but when you don’t have any milestone, there is no telling where you are in your journey, the only thing you will feel is the weight of time on your mind associated with the boredom.

This is actually something most people don’t think of doing, they live life like it was an adventure to explore and every day like something new to discover, but I think you need to live life intentionally, knowing exactly where you are at each point of the journey.

Fighting the feeling

Feeling lost in your own life is never a good thing, it's a feeling you must fight because it can easily lead you to depression and a false sense of sadness. You should definitely seek to live life intentionally, having control of everything you do and where you are on your journey, being fully conscious of where you are in life and where you are aiming to go. The road might be bumpy and full of ups and downs, but your overall trajectory should be clear to you at least. Fight that feeling and seek to gain control on your emotions and on your reality.

Thanks for reading ☺️

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