Who decided the rules?
Who decided the timelines?
And when did we all quietly agree to follow them?

Sometimes I wonder if we’re all living the same lie – just at different speeds.

Or maybe we’ve been trained this way all our lives.
Trained to stay average.
Trained to not disrupt the order.
Trained so that no one asks too many questions, and no one breaks the script.

Because those who do , the ones who step outside the timeline they often scare us. And yet, they’re the ones we later call successful. We admire them from a distance, while still choosing safety for ourselves.

From the very beginning, we are taught how life should unfold.
Study at a certain age.
Build a career by a certain time.
Achieve certain milestones before a certain number.

We are fed these timelines so early that they begin to feel like truth. We’re taught to behave in a certain way, to believe certain things , even when something inside us quietly disagrees. Even when we don’t have real evidence that this is the only way to live.

At some point, we stop questioning.

As children, curiosity comes naturally. We ask endless questions. We want to know why. We’re told children are curious , almost as if it’s a phase we’re expected to outgrow.

And maybe that’s exactly what happens.

Somewhere along the way, we learn that asking too many questions is inconvenient. That curiosity slows things down. That following instructions is easier than exploring on our own.

So we bury our questions.
We replace curiosity with compliance.
We trade exploration for approval.

We begin to follow the script of a “good life” that’s been handed to us without reading the fine print. We convince ourselves it’s for the best. That trusting what we’ve been told is safer than figuring things out for ourselves.

And maybe it is safer.
But is it honest?

How many of us feel behind simply because our lives don’t match a timeline that was never designed for us in the first place? How often do we mistake difference for failure?

The truth is – there is nothing wrong with you for moving at your own pace. There is nothing broken about a life that doesn’t tick boxes on time. And there is nothing weak about choosing a path that doesn’t look familiar to others.

Maybe the real work isn’t catching up.
Maybe it’s unlearning.

Unlearning the urgency.
Unlearning the comparison.
Unlearning the belief that there’s only one “right” way to live.

Maybe – Just MAYBE the real problem isn’t that we’re behind.
Maybe it’s that we keep trying to catch up to lives that were never meant for us.

There is no universal timeline. No correct age. No fixed order.

The moment we stop measuring ourselves against borrowed clocks, we don’t fall apart, we finally begin to live.

Anindita Rath
@scrambledwriter

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