Your Life Isn’t Behind.

I think one of the cruelest things we do to ourselves is imagine the person we would’ve been if we’d done everything differently. If I’d started sooner. If I hadn’t stopped. If I’d stayed consistent. If I hadn’t wasted those years on that relationship, that job, that version of myself. If I’d known then what I know now.

I still catch myself doing this at times. There’s this imaginary version of me who exists somewhere in my imagination. She made all the right decisions. She never disappeared when life became overwhelming. She never lost momentum. She didn’t spend years trying to figure out who she was. She didn’t “blow” her entire 20’s on traveling but instead on building an unbreakable foundation for herself. She built everything at exactly the right time, made the right investments, chose the right people, and somehow arrived at 37 with every box checked.

She’s also completely fictional. And yet I compare myself to her more often than I’d like to admit, especially with my 37th around the corner next month.

I think a lot of us do. I had very vivid ideas in my mind as a young girl of how my life would look at 20, 30, 35, 40… And so far, it consistently has looked totally different. And I’m learning that’s okay.

We have this strange idea that life is supposed to move in one direction: up. More money. More success. More followers. A better body. A better relationship. A bigger house. A clearer purpose. Every year is supposed to somehow prove that we’re doing better than the year before. And when it doesn’t, we think we’re behind.

But behind what? That’s the question I’ve been sitting with. Behind who?

There’s no universal timeline. There’s no invisible Goddess standing somewhere with a clipboard saying, “You were actually supposed to have figured this out three years ago.” And yet we live as though there is. We turn 30 and panic about what hasn’t happened yet. I know I did. I felt very empowered around my age until I saw that number, and I unexpectedly panicked. I felt like all of a sudden I was racing against some invisible clock. We now watch people online younger than us accomplish things we’ve wanted for years and wonder what the hell we’ve been doing with our lives.

Social media makes it even stranger because we’re constantly watching thousands of completely different lives unfolding at once. Someone buys their dream house at 21. Someone sells a company at 28. Someone gets married. Someone has a baby. Someone’s book becomes a bestseller. Someone suddenly has a million followers. And you’re sitting there eating a (vegan) chocolate cupcake over the sink wondering if you somehow missed the orientation meeting where everyone was told how to do life. (Yes, that’s me.)

This was especially difficult for me as I transitioned into my 30’s as a full time spiritual teacher who many thought had it all figured out. I was seeking spiritual paths and answers my entire 20’s all around the world, only to arrive with one answer: that I’ll never have all the answers! I put so much pressure on myself to get to some unattainable point of figuring out life and doing everything right.

I’m starting to believe that one of the most damaging things we can do is measure a nonlinear life with a linear ruler.

Nature doesn’t work that way. Everything moves in seasons. There are seasons of blooming and seasons where everything looks dead. There are seasons where your entire life seems to expand at once. You’re creating, traveling, meeting people, making money, falling in love. Everything feels electric.

And then there are winters. Years where very little seems to happen from the outside. Years where you’re healing, surviving, questioning everything, starting over, losing people, losing yourself, trying to figure out what you even want anymore. And because there isn’t always something impressive to show for those years, we decide they didn’t count. Or worse, that we wasted them.

But a tree in winter doesn’t look at the tree it was in July and think, “Fuck. I really fell off.” It’s still alive. There’s just a different kind of work happening beneath the surface.

I think some of the most important years of our lives are like that. The years nobody applauds. The years that don’t look particularly beautiful in photographs. The years when the old version of you is dying and the new one isn’t here yet.

I’ve had many of those years, and I’ve spent a lot of time wishing I could get them back. But I can’t. None of us can. And maybe the spiritual work isn’t figuring out how to make up for lost time. Maybe it’s finally stopping the war with the life we actually lived.

Because every time I think of where I should be by now, I abandon where I am. And this moment is the only place from which I can actually create from, love from, live from.

You can only begin here. Now.

Instead of asking, “Where should I be by now?” I’m asking, “What wants to blossom from where I am now?”

No imaginary deadline. No alternate universe where I did everything perfectly. Just now. What do I want to create now? Who do I want to be now? What am I curious about now? What part of myself wants to come ALIVE now?

Maybe you’re 27 and starting again. Maybe you’re 37. Maybe you’re 57. Maybe the thing you thought would last forever just ended. Maybe you abandoned a dream years ago and it’s quietly started whispering to you again. Maybe you look around at your life and genuinely don’t understand how you got here.

You’re still here. And as long as you’re here, something new can begin. At any age and phase of your life.

There is no expiration date on reinvention. I don’t believe your greatest work has to happen while you’re young, quite the opposite actually. Great work comes from wisdom and true life experience. I don’t believe one or two unexpected detours destroy your destiny. And I definitely don’t believe life is a race where everyone started at the same line and whoever accumulated the most by a certain age wins.

As I currently finish my memoir (sending into publishers next week, yay!) I realize the stories and relationships are the hardest ones I moved through. They weren’t perfect, but they’re the ones that make the story. My healthiest relationships are hardly even mentioned, ha!

It’s the challenges that make our lives interesting, our stories worth telling. It’s how we truly relate to one another. Not through Instagram highlight reels.

Maybe some of us are meant to live several lives inside of one. To begin, lose ourselves, and begin again. To become certain and then question everything. To build something and walk away from it. To love people we eventually outgrow. To discover that a dream we spent fifteen years chasing isn’t actually ours anymore (that’s what happened to me). And then, sometimes, to find our way back to something we thought we’d lost forever.

I’m trying to stop mourning the woman I could’ve been. She never existed! But I do. And there are still so many things I want to experience, create, learn, see, become, and give to this world.

So perhaps I’m not behind. Perhaps you aren’t either. Perhaps we’re right on time. Perhaps we are just here.

And here is still a place from which an entire life can begin.