Do you remember this phrase? “When you grow up, you’ll understand.” This must have made no sense maybe a decade or two ago, but do you get it now? I used to think this phrase was ridiculous. How hard could it be for you to tell me to wait to understand? I’m grateful for the years of ignorance; they were blessings in disguise.

You now pay for that ignorance because living in the moment is a huge sacrifice. Robbing you of worry, anxiety, trauma, and all the other ingredients that make adulthood. You think the more you suffer, the higher your level of adulting, but that’s by the way. How much do you really understand now?

Your level of understanding depends on your experience. For example, a person who’s never been heartbroken will never understand the pain of loving, no matter how well you explain it. This is why it always seems like some people are having more fun than you; they are just not at your experience level, and they never might be.

For some, they may even get to skip that experience. Does that mean you find life more challenging? By your standards, maybe yes, but realistically, everyone’s problem is just as demanding. Now you can understand why your parents told you no so many times or why they taught you patience. Because even if they explained it to you, it would have made zero sense if you didn’t have to practice it.

We all want to skip to the good part. That’s how it felt as a kid; that adulthood was the good part. And saying things like, “You’ll understand when you grow up” to a younger person was too cool to wait for. But you’re here now, and you’re doing it again. You’ve realized it’s not all fun and want it to pass quickly to the part where it all comes together.

Guess where you’re rushing to: “an Adulter adult.” Pardon my grammar. Do you think it becomes a different life because you grow older? It’s still you, in the same body, with more experience, but another ball game. The same rules you applied as a kid won’t work now. It’s the same way those of now can’t serve you in years to come.

This might sound like bad advice, but you should practice slowing down. You will never understand everything, and that’s okay. There’s enough experience for you to last a lifetime. You keep rushing as if you kept the answer hidden a few years from now, when all that’s waiting for you is more questions.

You’ll see that if you focus on what you can do now for long enough, the answers for now will find their way to you. You have everything you need for now; when tomorrow comes, you will also have everything. There’s no certainty in what you look forward to; there’s only more chaos.

You are rushing and comparing, then when you are finally where you kept anticipating, you say no one told you it would be this hard. If you had been conscious of your moments, you would have realized that every day had enough problems of its own, and you made them worse by thinking they would disappear tomorrow.

Song of the moment 🤭 Boat – by Ed Sheeran. Don’t forget to smile❤️