How are you supposed to live your life?

J.A.B. Barredo 30/11/2025

By JuizPublished about a month ago • 7 min read

J.A.B. Barredo 30/11/2025

How are you really supposed to live your life?

Is it necessary to chase the dreams you wrote in 3rd grade ? The ones you proudly shared in front of the class while your parents applauded and your classmates watched in awe?

Do you have to pursue the profession your parents wanted for you, trying to achieve the goals they once had but never reached?

Or are you meant to follow the jobs that fascinated you when you were eight?

A teacher, an astronaut, a doctor, a soldier or even a cashier?

This simple question was thrown at me at twenty-five. At first, I laughed. Not because it was funny, but because it shut my mind down. I couldn’t find an answer. That one small question dragged me back to the moment I started planning my life as a nine-year-old. I set a timeline that I thought I would strictly follow:

At eighteen, I should move out and find a job preferably in the BPO industry, because I was amazed by the idea of assisting clients over the phone and working at night. A weird dream, maybe, but it was mine.

By twenty-five, I should be done with my studies. By twenty-eight, I should settle down with someone I could tolerate for the rest of my life. Build a happy home. Start my own family.

Now I am twenty-five.

Where am I in life?

I’m here…sitting in a café in Haarlem, Netherlands, trying to warm myself with a cup of coffee with the company of a lovely Dutch lady who asks the kind of random questions that stick to your bones. The gloomy, grey, misty weather doesn’t help me find the answer.

I take a sip of my coffee and look around. One thing is for sure: at twenty-five, I’m not in the Philippines anymore. I’m in Haarlem.

Am I done with my studies? No.

And why not?

That answer takes me back to what happened when I turned eighteen.

After two weeks of graduating from high school, I moved into my own apartment and was lucky enough to be hired by a BPO company in my province. I got paid well…more than enough for myself. I told myself: I’m earning. I’m making my own money. I paid my own bills, supported my studies, and worked as a sales specialist for an American insurance company.

I got addicted to the commissions. I didn’t care much about my basic salary as long as I hit my numbers. More sales meant more money. Each month, I tried to surpass the last. I made big money — but there was a price.

Two years later, I found myself exhausted by the same routine. Same spiels, same sales, same American clients. No progress. No learning. I was stuck.

At twenty, pressure was an understatement. Everything weighed so heavily that my body wanted to collapse and my soul almost perished. My family business was spiraling down, my parents separated, and financial struggles were handed to me as a responsibility.

I found myself in the middle of a grey forest … foggy, blurry, unable to find a way out. I was struggling. My mind was restless. Then I remembered: I was just twenty. I still had time.

I gave up my studies and supported my brother’s instead. I became a breadwinner at twenty. Huge responsibilities I simply cannot ignore.

At twenty-one, I moved to a different city. Got a new job. Learned new things. Met new faces, new stories, new life lessons.

At twenty-three, I became a Technical Support Team Leader. A bigger role meant bigger responsibilities. It took almost all my time, and I still didn’t have the chance to continue my studies.

At twenty-four, I should have been close to finishing my Psychology degree. But life happens, and sometimes you make stupid decisions just to spice things up. I knew I didn’t have to follow the timeline created by my nine-year-old self. I still had time. I had my time.

Then, my twenty-four-year-old self took a big leap.

I decided to face a new adventure — something no one in my family ever dared to do. I moved out of the country. At twenty-four, I found myself in Belgium, learning cultural differences, learning a new language, and seeing a completely different family dynamic. My mind was free, peaceful, the calmest it had ever been. I began doing the things I used to love, the things I had buried because of a timeline I felt obligated to follow.

I realized I had been so focused on following the lines my nine-year-old self drew for me that I forgot life would hand me things that could change my entire perception of how life is supposed to be lived.

I forgot I had talents and passions beyond making money.

In Belgium, I rediscovered them. I bought canvases and brushes and painted and painted. Nothing made me happier than that. I found myself enjoying photography, writing poems and essays, even selling some of my paintings and joining community causes.

But growth has a strange way of leading you somewhere new just when you think you’ve finally learned how to breathe. Belgium softened me, and reminded me of who I was underneath all the noise.

Rediscovery wasn’t the ending.

It was the doorway.

And the next chapter of my life began quietly, almost unnoticed…

in a small café in Haarlem, with cold weather outside, warm coffee in my hands, and a question echoing louder than everything I thought I knew.

I take a slow sip of my coffee, letting the warmth settle on my tongue. Hoping it might help untangle the thoughts inside my chest. My eyes roam around the café…small round wooden tables, the soft clinking of spoons, the gentle hum of Dutch conversations that still sound like music I haven’t fully learned the notes to. Outside, people pass by in coats… the color of winter. Inside, everything feels still, like the world is waiting for me to answer a question I’ve been trying to outrun.

The Dutch lady is calmly sitting in front of me. Her eyes are soft, her voice curious. She tilts her head and watches me think. She doesn’t rush me. She doesn’t fill the silence. She waits, as if she already knows that in silence, people often meet themselves.

For a moment, I close my eyes.

Maybe the answers don’t hide in childhood plans or the paths others hoped for us.

Maybe they’re tucked inside moments like this: quiet, ordinary, but undeniably honest.

I take another sip, deeper this time.

And something shifts.

Not the answer.

But the willingness to look for it.

At twenty-five, I moved to the Netherlands, stepping into a chapter that felt like fresh air after a long storm. Haarlem, Amsterdam, Leiden…cities that breathed differently, people who thought differently, stories that stretched farther than my own.

I met people who opened my eyes to the world not as a rigid map, but as a living thing…smooth, layered, endlessly expanding. They didn’t teach me who to be. They taught me how to see.

Here, I wrote again.

Studied again.

Chose myself again.

I cared for my mental well-being not out of survival, but desire.

I painted like someone rediscovering light.

I started learning Dutch slowly and softly.

I created, I felt, I breathed.

And for the first time, I lived in a space where I was safe enough to grow freely.

A space where I didn’t have to be strong — just honest.

I sighed and took another sip of my almost finished coffee, clarity touched me gently, like a whisper brushing my shoulder.

I wasn’t lost.

I was simply living.

I looked at the Dutch lady and finally said, “Maybe life isn’t meant to be followed like a timeline. Maybe it’s meant to be discovered… one unexpected moment at a time.”