Welcome to the rest of your life.

When I was younger, I had a picture in my head of what my life would look like when I was older. Now that I am older, my life is nothing like I imagined. I imagined that by 26, I’d be happily married, or at least engaged, with the thought of children on the not-so-far horizon. And yet, I’m 26 and the closest thing I have to a relationship is my dog. I definitely thought I’d have my life a little more together than this. I was talking about this with someone today and this is how the conversation went:

M: Is this something you want to be doing for the rest of your life?

B: No. I don’t think so…
M: So why are you doing it now?
B: Well, uhhh, umm, I don’t know. I wanna be doing it now. I guess. Maybe.
M: Well, the rest of your life is right now. What are you waiting for?
B: Ugh.

It’s something you hear all the time, but it really hit me hard today. The rest of your life is right now. There’s no before and after. There’s no waiting for the perfect moment. Life is happening right now and when we deny ourselves of living in the moment, we deny ourselves of the best possible future version of ourselves. It’s human nature, or at least MY nature, to procrastinate and rationalize (I could get a gold medal for rationalizing). “I’m tired today, I’ll do it tomorrow. I’m busy this week, but maybe I’ll start next week. There’s a lot going on in my life right now, so it’s not a good time.” All excuses that put things off. We can continue to put things off, but to be completely honest, that doesn’t really help anything. There will never be a perfect moment and if it’s something really hard that I’m putting off, it’s gonna be hard now and it’s gonna be hard later. But there is beauty (and a lot of anxiety and fear) in doing something hard and coming out on the other side.

Ultimately, we are not promised tomorrow. So don’t let “the rest of your life” start after you lose a few more pounds or have a little more time or get a little more rest. Whether it’s what I want it to look like or not, it’s my life and it’s happening right now.