NO feeling is quite as gut-wrenching as watching a train pass by, knowing that when its last carriage has passed, you will be left behind with no reflection to keep you company. Maybe that emotion is comparable to saying goodbye to someone at an airport, with a forbidden mixture of envy and sadness, as they move on to a better part of their life. Or it might be close to the isolation you feel standing in the middle of a crowd of strangers, with everyone seeming as if they have somewhere to be or someone to meet. It is a sense of coldness that takes residence in the parts of you that warmth ought to fill.
As cruel as this feeling can be, we must learn to understand it and eventually accept it. Each of us has a different path we are meant to take in life. This means that at some point, it will feel like we are being left behind, but we are not. We are just moving in different directions. Trying to go in the same direction as someone else just because you do not want to feel left behind is like planting a cactus in clayey soil or a rice plant in dry sand. There is a tiny chance it might survive, but it will never thrive.
If you have ever gone to a restaurant and forced yourself to order the same food everyone else was ordering to feel included, you might understand how the need to avoid being left out or left behind can negatively affect you. In that particular scenario, you would have lost a unique experience and the joy of trying something that you like. Perhaps it might have been worth it to share a happy moment with your friends. However, if we keep making choices again and again solely to fit in or feel included, it will eventually affect our lives more deeply, and the losses we experience will grow.
What if, for example, we found ourselves struggling to choose a career? Instead of making the effort to understand what we want to do, we might be inclined to take the easy route and follow someone else. At first, this choice may feel comforting because we have someone to share the journey with, and because we don’t have to face the prospect of being left behind while everyone else moves forward. Following others means we don’t have to be left behind, but it also means we will never get to embark on a journey of our own. Eventually, that ill-fitting choice will become a source of bitterness and discomfort.
If you wouldn’t wear someone else’s ill-fitting shoes to match them, why would you step into their lives and replicate their choices?
Sometimes, members of our generation can become too comfortable with the idea of being comfortable. Not every journey, choice or discovery can be made in the company of others. In fact, the most wonderful part of soul-searching is done alone and without the help of others. If you are going down a path and feel like you are being left behind, take a moment to pause and consider what parameters you are using to decide whether you are going in the right direction. If you are using the people around you to make that decision, then you may need to consider whether the answer you’ve chosen is correct at all! It is time for us to stop depending on directions from other people when we are the only ones who know what we want our destination to be.
Human beings are not meant to be alone. More often than not, finding friends and people to love is what gives life its warmth and beauty. Nevertheless, we will enter and leave this earth by ourselves, so we must also learn to sculpt the path between these two milestones.
