Everyone Is On A Different Journey, So Stop Comparing

Why life is different for every person & why it doesn’t follow a designated timeline or path

This article is an extension of a chapter in my book Make Your Own Waves, which you can check out at the link here: https://amzn.eu/d/b5sgIuG

It’s another rainy afternoon in Mumbai city, the city I call home & the city where I’ve spent the largest chunk of my life. I’ve always harboured the wish to live in a different country & different city. But life just hasn’t panned out that way.

I’ve been wanting to do my Master’s degree for years now; I’ve had that target for most of my early thirties. Most of my peers did their Master’s degree early in their twenties (early or slightly later) & I kept blaming myself for missing the bus.

But after deciding to do it late, I wanted to do a Master’s that amalgamated my Bachelor’s degree in Engineering with my work experience as a music producer.

So after honing in on the subject I wanted to study for my Master’s, i.e. Music Technology, I applied to a few colleges that were within my budget. Most of the colleges I found in my searches online were too expensive, and only about a handful fit within my budget.

And I specifically wanted to study in the EU because colleges in the UK & US had exorbitant fees & living expenses & I had fallen in love with Europe & European culture on my visit there for an exchange program in my teenage years: the cobblestone streets with cafes & pubs at every corner, the nature, landscape & city planning, the food, the art, the weather & the people & a month living with them being home-hosted, made me covet living in Europe again.

However, despite my compelling, detailed & well-conceived & well-written applications, which I poured a lot of thought & effort into, I was rejected on the grounds that my application was “too technical” for a degree that was titled a Master’s in Music “Technology”.

While I won’t name the college, they sent me two rejections for two separate intakes, deeming that my proposal was “too technical”. I mean, a college offering a Master’s in Music “Technology” saying it was “too technical” was rather preposterous… “technology” is “technical”!!!

I was aghast at the rejections because I was prepared for and really wanted to study again and live in a country in the EU.

But that’s life for you. Some doors open, some doors close & we have to really just adapt & flow with life.

I blamed myself & berated myself for trying to start two businesses in my twenties while my peers were all studying & for missing the bus for higher studies at the “right time”.

I thought, at the time, that I would be ahead of them eventually if my business ventures were successful. But I failed. I blew my savings and was grounded in Mumbai & had to start a career (or two separate careers in writing and music) from scratch.

But that was life propelling me in another direction. That was life laying out a different path for me. It was leading me down another road, a road that would take time but give me fulfilment & fit into who I was as a person.

As a writer, I tend to overthink, over-analyse, over-philosophise and quantify life; I guess we all do to a certain degree.

But life is its own free being. It doesn’t work within systems and whims. It is, for the most part, a random thing that you cannot assert control over. And it most certainly doesn’t go as planned.

I’ve always had the notion that certain milestones in life must be achieved at specific ages. But I’ve found out the hard way that life doesn’t work that way.

That’s the thing about life. People take different roads: some roads are different & go against the grain, some are just what that particular person needs at the time, and some roads reveal themselves after a long time.

We all take different roads, some early and some late, but we arrive in the place that we’re supposed to be, or I guess you just have to believe that.

Most of my peers graduated from their Master’s courses and found jobs abroad. They’re now well settled there. They’ve found a life partner & had kids & everything looks to me, the outsider, that it’s all going according to plan and smoothly for them.

But life isn’t like that. Everyone is on their own different path & journey.

To others like me, from the outside looking in, it may seem like everyone is getting ahead & their life is going smoothly, but we don’t see the setbacks, the failures, & the struggles they’ve faced behind the scenes.

We tend to look, judge and compare our lives & the timelines of our lives to others with just a snapshot in view, i.e. a few text message conversations or calls, their posts on social media of vacations & kids & date nights & proposing to their partners.

But we don’t see the full picture.

Some people had to leave the countries where they studied their Master’s. Some worked for some time there & had to come back to India for varied reasons. Some went there with a job secured, but their employers’ company eventually couldn’t stay afloat & they had to return.

Others got divorced & had to contend with legal battles over their children. Others got rejected by the love of their life and had to start over.

Some started startups that were hugely successful. Some sold their startups for a huge chunk of cash but were left unfulfilled in other areas of their lives. Others failed in their startup ventures or had their companies deemed redundant after the passing of a government bill. Others bought Bitcoin early and are sitting pretty on cash, but can’t seem to find fulfilment.

Some have achieved their net worth targets, others post on LinkedIn saying they’ve been laid off & are looking for a job and have been unemployed for over a year because of AI & automation causing layoffs. Others have become social media influencers, or some have become philosophers & travel, giving TED Talks & visiting monasteries regularly.

Others are still trying to figure things out, are unmarried & have quit their jobs to find what they truly want to do.

It’s a vast myriad landscape of different lives unfolding in their own ways.

No one has it all figured out.

And nobody’s life goes according to plan.

It’s all subjective & varies from person to person.

To others who look at my life, based on my social media or blog posts, they think that I’m living out my passions, i.e. writing about football as a football journalist for over ten years, writing about music & film as well, and releasing books as a writer, and learning instruments & putting out music as a musician/music producer & artist & composing music for film.

Some of my friends who are even more passionate about football than me have told me they want to start a career in the industry too & they wish they could “monetise their passion for the game”, and that I’m “lucky” to be writing about the sport for a living and working remotely.

But they don’t see my personal setbacks and what I’m searching & yearning for.

Looking back, it was life’s way of pointing me towards writing & music as my path in life. It wouldn’t have happened had I gone abroad for my Master’s degree in my twenties. It was just what I needed to grow in my own life.

When you look at just the snapshot of people’s lives on social media or in your interactions with them, you don’t see the whole picture.

Life is subjective from person to person. You might covet what others have & others might covet what you have.

I’ve learned that life is different for everybody. Everybody is on their own unique journey and path. So it doesn’t make sense to try to aggregate other people’s lives and compare them to your own.

It’s not just you or me; this happens to everybody.

This article by another Medium writer, titled “Life doesn’t care who started early or late”, echoes the same thing.

Furthermore, reading this book, written by a Zen monk named Jikisai Minami, which I wrote an earlier post about, echoed the broader message that: Life isn’t a race. It’s meant to be lived. Whether you achieve your goals, ambitions & targets or not.

Life really is strange in that sense.

Despite planning, stressing, or trying to assert control over our lives, it doesn’t follow a designated path, logic or fairness.

It’s random.

But that’s just part of the process of being human.

Life unfolds differently for everybody, and you just have to believe that it will unfold in the ways that’s best for you.

It’s perhaps imperative, however, not to fall into the vicious cycle of comparing your life to other people’s. This can lead to a lot of unhappiness and unfulfilment.

You can’t control the timing of events in your life & neither can they.

In the end, we’re all here to live life to the fullest, and learn, grow, adapt & keep moving forward.

Life is too short to fall into the chasms of comparison & beat yourself up about it.

Although in this age of social media, it’s easier said than done.

Nobody's life is perfect & complete, despite seeming that way based on our snapshot view of their lives.

Everyone has their own share of struggles & setbacks, which you know nothing about. And everyone is on their own unique journey.

So keep that in mind the next time you fall into the trap of comparing your life to others.

We must appreciate & be grateful for what we have, and trust in the process of living & figuring out our lives for ourselves.

We tend to live by giving prime importance to our achievements & our goals, ambitions & targets, but they don’t always work out or take their own time to happen. And that’s okay!

It helps to not primarily focus on the achievements of your own life or those of others. But rather, to focus on the richness of your days and how you spend your time on a day-to-day basis & the process of living life.

In the end, how we live out our lives in the day-to-day & how we learn and grow & live it to the fullest, matter the most in this brief timeframe of existence.

We need to acknowledge that life is short — roughly 4000 weeks — as I’ve mentioned in the opening chapter of my book, based on author Oliver Burkeman’s analysis.

So stop comparing and start living.

Just relax, take a breath.

And trust in your journey & process.

Thanks for taking the time to read this article…

This article is an extension of a chapter in my book Make Your Own Waves, which you can buy at the link: https://amzn.eu/d/dZaX8Dr

If you’re in India, you can buy it here: https://amzn.in/d/fA4iDgb

This article was originally published on my Medium.

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