By the time you are in your late twenties

If you are in your late twenties, you are at that age when you are all on your own. The world looks at you as an adult and you are expected to behave like one. You have to pay your bills, fill the car, talk with agents and negotiate rent. If you are lucky you may even be in a position of some power and have people working under you.  

By now, you may have made some discoveries by experience. Things that were common wisdom now have become real to you. All your life you may have heard the saying - 'This too shall pass' and now you understand its power. You never realized the truth in that little sentence until one day, somewhere, you slumped to the floor, bent on your knees, disillusioned and broken. That is when somewhere inside you, a little voice said "Take courage. This too shall pass". How comforting it seems then amidst all the pain to know for certain that you will walk out of this too, somehow.

When you had lost all faith and forgotten the God that you had learnt about as a child in church and in the evening prayers at home when your mom forced you to come and sit with her. That God becomes so much more a reality when you are lost in life's jungle and are in desperate need of a guide. When situations try to overpower you and in those turbid moments a line out of the Holy Book, you had read long back, comes to you. Now alive and strong, it says "The Lord, your God will deliver you."

You have now seen that the resolutions of your night, the plans made in those worrying hours between sleep and consciousness, get weaker during the day. But, you don't stop planning. You shouldn't.

Yes, you have learnt a lot in these many years and probably life is going to teach you yet many a things.

By now, you know that the world is not a very good place to live in. Your fantasies of an utopian world have been shattered. You have seen people cheat and walk out on you, sometimes strangers, sometimes friends. But you may have not yet learnt not to do the same to others. You may yet have to learn to keep your own word.

You may have learnt to judge people, but you may be yet to learn to hold back from condemning them.

You have probably realized that sin is real. Even if you thought you got away with it, it will come back later, in spirit, to haunt you. But you may not have grown up yet to stop committing the same sins all over.

You may have learnt that life is not all about nodding yeses to everyone around. You have begun to realize what you want out of your own life and it may not be what everyone else wants out if it. You know you have to take your own decisions. You may still need to build the courage to do that.

 

You may have known what it feels to be alone and weak and you may have seen help coming from the most unexpected person. But you may have yet to learn to help someone in turn.

In your late twenties, you are in a stage in your life when it is okay if you cannot say that Life is Beautiful. It is fine if you say that life is just about OK.

Don't worry about it. You are still in the first half of your book. It is where the tension is mounting. The heroes have not yet emerged. Solutions and happy endings will come your way. Keep reading. Keep living.