One of many things I learnt about myself in 2024 is that a lot of my anxiety and insecurities stem from a subconscious obsession with wanting to be ‘normal’. I can be perfectly content spending a day by myself until I’m suddenly hit with the negative thought spiral of, “Is this what a normal 20-year-old should be doing? Am I wasting my youth? Am I appreciating my life enough?” which often puts me in a bad mood.
The night before I flew home from Geneva, I worked myself into a state thinking, “It’s not as if my life was perfect before. I’m just going to have the same boring life I had before I came here and I’ll never be happy again.” I was finding it hard to be proud of getting through Geneva as I was constantly questioning the point of it. I told myself the reason I went, and why I’m continuing my year abroad, is to complete my degree, but I couldn’t help but question whether there’s even a point in that.
I’m currently sitting on my bed typing this, and my life is fairly similar to how it was before setting out on my year abroad (albeit with the added stress of having to return to Geneva and sorting out my Austrian visa). I’ve realised, though, that having a ‘boring’ life isn’t a bad thing at all. When I was at uni in the UK and I spoke with people who decided against university, I didn’t envy them. I felt like my purpose was to graduate, even if I had no idea what my life goal would be after that. Now, on a year abroad, when I speak to those same types of people, I sometimes feel jealous and wish I were living a life without academically imposed years abroad. Theodore Roosevelt once said that “comparison is the thief of joy” and I think he hit the mark with that. It’s only when I start to compare myself with others that I begin feeling dissatisfied.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, and the older I get, the more I realise how much social media is to blame. Before the era of Snapchat, Instagram and similar apps, you’d have no clear idea of what others were doing, so how would you know whether you’re ‘normal’ or not? It wouldn’t matter. Nowadays, it feels as though we’re always trying to live up to the expectations created by others’ glamourised lives, and we forget we’re only seeing what they want us to see. It’s not often you see pictures of people during their worst time, or at least where they admit that it is. When I’ve met up with friends since my return, some were shocked to learn how bad things had been for me because my Instagram posts gave the impression I was having a great time. I was playing the game too.
My remedy for this is something I’ve written about in another post: the act of ‘romanticising my life’. The way I’d describe it is finding appreciation in the small things and mindfully approaching each day. When I was at the peak of my anxiety in Geneva, I put so much pressure on myself: “Why aren’t you happy right now? Your life could be so much worse – you need to be grateful!” but I’ve learnt along the way that it’s not necessarily about being happy all the time since that’s impossible. Instead, it’s about taking pleasure in the mundanity of life.
I’m currently reading Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton and I think she captures it perfectly (if you’re planning on reading it, spoiler warning): after the death of her best friend’s sister, she describes walking by the river together and saying, “I was grateful for understanding in that moment that life can really be as simple as just breathing in and out”. This line brought a smile to my face because it reminded me how often we get caught up in life’s stresses and forget that, at its core, life is both simple and beautiful.
I talked before about the concept of having ‘purposes’ and ‘life goals’. I’ll admit, I’m terrified of the day I graduate from uni, because I worry my mind will ask “now what?” and I won’t have the answer. A flaw in my thinking is that I tend to tie my sense of purpose entirely to academic or professional achievements, when there’s so much more to life than that. Life is also about the morning coffee, catching up with old friends, seeing a cute dog on the street, watching the last episode of your favourite series, the list is endless.
Our capitalist society conditions us into thinking that anything that doesn’t make us money is ‘pointless’ and a ‘waste of time’, but I beg to differ. Humans are hedonistic by nature; our purpose isn’t to work ourselves to the bone so we have no energy to enjoy the rewards of our labour – it’s to connect, to laugh, and to have a bit of fun! So, even if I don’t yet know what my ‘life’s purpose’ is, the world is vast and I’m confident I’ll find it. In the meantime, waking up and simply breathing in and out is enough.
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