We’ve all been there—slumped down in bed late at night, fixating on the things we haven’t yet accomplished instead of focusing on the things we have done. It’s a recurring moment of self-disappointment because there is always more we can and should do. We want to live in a state of constant mobility because the alternative is a rut-like existence. Or is it?
Once during a counseling session, my counselor observed that the reason I’m often afraid to do hard things—whether that be school, career, or life-related—is because I move on too fast from the previous things I have achieved. Whenever I wanted to attempt something, I thought of myself as starting from zero and having no prior experience of any sort. He essentially told me I needed to meditate more on my successes so that when it came time to do new things, I knew I was capable of doing them.
This idea of feeling behind doesn’t start with us. Rather, it exists in a larger social context, which, unbeknownst to us, we live in. There are plenty of videos circulating in the media telling us what our 20s are for, and I’m talking about an overwhelming amount of them. It’s gotten to the point where we don’t allow ourselves to fill in the blank—but maybe that’s another problem. Why do we have to fill in the blank in the first place? And no, I’m not saying we can’t have dreams and aspirations. Living aimlessly isn’t exactly sustainable but thinking that you can break your life into fixed stages is because if you put an age estimate on your goals, then you start to believe—say those famous lines with me: “I feel behind in life.”
When I feel lost and highly unmotivated, I do the next best thing—watch a movie. They have a funny way of giving us a new perspective on things when we least expect it, and this can be any movie, from any genre. In my case, it was the 1994 film “Reality Bites” starring Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke, among other co-stars. And I have to be honest, this movie had been sitting in my watchlist for a while, and it wasn’t until one Sunday night that I got around to seeing it. The movie follows a group of friends “suffering from post-collegiate blues,” as Letterboxd describes.
Lelaina Pierce (Ryder) was valedictorian at her school, which meant she was bound straight for success. However, in post-grad, we find her interning for television and for a man she despises, who eventually fires her, forcing Lelaina to go on a job hunt that feels more like a humiliation ritual. Troy Dyer (Hawke) is a college dropout, lead singer in a band, and has a serious ego problem. He’s been let go from too many jobs and flaunts his knowledge on things at any given chance. Whether I enjoyed the movie or not, I got to say it was worth watching because of one particular scene. Lelaina and Troy are having a conversation in the disheveled apartment they share with their two other friends. At one point, Lelaina says, “I was really gonna be something by the age of 23,” to which Troy replies, “Honey, all you have to be by the age of 23 is yourself.” There’s the line—the one in every movie that gives you perspective and will stick with you.
It’s harder than it sounds to let ourselves be wherever we are in life without guilt, to cease our fidgeting and nervous sprints toward future versions of ourselves. With my senior year starting next fall, I’ve been trying to redefine what success means on a personal scale because there have been plenty of difficulties in my life that I’ve overcome, and that alone already makes me successful. School, careers, romance, and more—these things will come and go, so what is the basis of our success when we occasionally lack one or all of these? Feeling like you’re behind is a matter of comparison. Look around you and identify whose life you’re trying to emulate, and frankly, do yourself a favor and snap out of it. Take the necessary measures that start living your life independently from other people’s success, because after all, just as I recently read on a Substack note, “how can you be behind in life when your life is only yours.”