HOW DO I KNOW IF I’M LIVING THE RIGHT LIFE?

Maybe the hardest part of growing up isn't making decisions. It's wondering about all the lives we'll never get to live.

I genuinely think your twenties are the strangest years of your life. One friend is getting married, another has just moved across the world with a backpack, someone is announcing a pregnancy, someone else is still trying to get their first “real” job, and then there's that one friend who somehow manages to meet a new person every weekend. Everyone is living completely different lives and the confusing part is... they all kind of look right. Which is not particularly helpful when you're trying to figure out if yours is.

When I was ten, 26 sounded extremely adult. Like, proper adult. I thought I'd have a house, a husband, maybe even a baby. More importantly, I thought I'd wake up every morning completely sure of who I was and what I was doing. Instead, I'm wondering if I should be focusing more on my career, dating more seriously, travelling while I still can, moving somewhere new, saving money, spending the money because “these are the years I'll remember”... honestly, pick one. Sometimes I even catch myself wondering if I'm making memories or just finding increasingly creative ways to delay adulthood.

And obviously, having everyone else's life in your hand at all times doesn't exactly help. Before I've even had breakfast, I've watched six engagement videos, three pregnancy announcements, someone quitting their job to “finally follow their dream,” a couple buying their first house and a girl my age packing her entire life into two suitcases to move to Bali. None of these people are even doing the same thing, yet somehow my brain manages to turn all of them into evidence that I should be doing more. Suddenly I'm comparing myself to five completely different timelines before 9am and thinking... wait, am I behind? Behind who? Apparently everyone.

The weird thing is, every time I actually talk to people instead of just watching their lives through a screen, the whole thing starts to fall apart a little. I was talking to a friend who's been with her boyfriend for five years and she said, “I love him. I genuinely think he's the love of my life. But sometimes I miss meeting new people.” And for a second I didn't really know what to say, because I'm living the exact thing she occasionally misses. I'm meeting new people. I have the freedom and the uncertainty and all the stories that come with it. And I'd be lying if I said I've never looked at a couple having coffee on a Sunday morning and thought... yeah, that looks really nice.

I think that's when something clicked for me. We're all looking sideways. The single person romanticises stability. The person in a relationship occasionally misses novelty. The one who stayed home wonders what would've happened if they'd moved abroad. The one who's been travelling for months suddenly misses having a favourite coffee shop where someone knows their order. Maybe we don't actually want someone else's entire life. We just notice the part of theirs that's missing from ours.

And I think that's where a lot of the confusion comes from, because nobody really tells you that choosing something also means not choosing something else. We talk about decisions as if the difficult part is figuring out which option we want, making the choice and moving on. But you don't really move on, do you? Somewhere in the back of your mind there will probably always be a tiny what if?

If I choose this career, I'll never know who I would've become if I'd chosen another one. If I move countries, I'll never know what my life would've looked like if I'd stayed. If I meet the love of my life now, I'll never know what it would've been like to spend the rest of my twenties completely single. If I stay single, maybe one day I'll wonder what it would've been like to build something with someone earlier. There are so many versions of ourselves we'll never get to meet. The version who stayed. The version who left. The version who married them. The version who didn't. The version who took the safe job and the version who bought a one-way ticket somewhere and somehow made it work.

And maybe part of growing up is grieving those people a little, which sounds dramatic until you realise we do it all the time. We think about the city we almost moved to. The person we almost stayed with. The career we nearly chose. Sometimes we're not unhappy with our life at all. We're just curious about the one that could've happened instead.

I think that's also why your twenties come with so much guilt. You finally have freedom and wonder if you should be building stability. You find stability and suddenly worry you're wasting your freedom. You focus on your career and wonder if you're neglecting your personal life. You fall in love and wonder if you should've spent more time alone first. Whatever you choose, there seems to be another version of twenty-something life somewhere online looking extremely convincing.

And because we're constantly questioning ourselves, we assume everyone else must be more certain. Surely the person getting married knows. Surely the friend who moved across the world knows. Surely the person who just accepted their dream job woke up one morning with some deep internal certainty that said yes, this is exactly what my life is supposed to look like.

Then you actually talk to them.

The person getting married is wondering if they're too young. The person travelling is wondering when they should come home. The friend with the impressive career is quietly thinking about doing something completely different. Everyone looks much more certain from the outside because you can't see the 1am conversations they're having with themselves.

Maybe certainty is just one of those things we thought adulthood would come with, like suddenly understanding taxes or knowing how often you're supposed to wash your sheets. I kept assuming I'd eventually reach an age where I would stop wondering if I was making the right choices. Now I'm starting to think the wondering might just come with having choices in the first place.

And weirdly, that makes me feel better.

Because maybe questioning your life doesn't automatically mean you chose the wrong one. Maybe you can love someone and still occasionally wonder about being single. You can love living abroad and miss home. You can be proud of your career and still think about doing something completely different. Two things can be true without one of them secretly revealing how you “really” feel.

The people I admire still change their minds. Couples I thought had everything figured out still have doubts. Friends who made the brave move abroad still wonder what would've happened if they'd stayed. Nobody is standing at some imaginary finish line thinking, yes, excellent, I definitely selected the correct life.

They're just living the one they chose.

And trying to make it feel like theirs.

So lately I've been wondering if “How do I know if I'm living the right life?” is even a question we're capable of answering. How could we know? We'd have to live all the alternatives first and compare notes, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be an option.

Maybe there isn't one perfect version of your life hidden somewhere that you're supposed to find before it's too late. Maybe there are lots of lives you could've been happy in. Lots of cities you could've loved, people you could've fallen for, careers you could've built, versions of yourself you could've become.

We just don't get to meet all of them.

And maybe growing up is slowly learning that choosing one doesn't mean the others would've been better.

They would've just been different.