Growing up in north India, where people prepare for marriage season more than they prepare for summers or winters, it is not too difficult to get caught in the thoughts of one’s own marriage. But is it really marriage that we dream about or just a perfect wedding. Most people are unable to differentiate between a wedding and a marriage. While wedding is a two-three day affair, marriage is for a lifetime. Marriage marks the next phase of one’s life. Though often we forget that it is just one of the many phases that have come and that are to come. It’s not the destination but part of the journey we call life. And since everyone’s journey is unique and so is everyone’s pace, then why do we expect all to reach at this place at the same time. Why do we live in a society where people over 25 are typecast as unmarried instead of being called single and what does it mean to have it all.

Does “having it all” have more to do with the timing of getting the desired happiness? Is timing” everything. And who are we scared to disappoint if the timing is wrong; us or our family. Our modern day families are happy in our happiness, so where is this unprecedented pressure coming from. Why do we grow up believing that we are in a race and our friends/classmates/colleagues are not our peers but our competitors? All of us have to face different hurdles in our way and yet we are all expected to set the same timeline to achieve our goals. But who sets this expectation for us.

The bigger question is what will happen when the expectations are not met. Does it change our life in some or the other way? Does it mean we stop working on what we want or stop living our life completely? Does it mean that we put everything on hold and sit and wait to get married even when we have no idea how long we might actually have to wait? Waiting is all the more tedious without a certain timeline. A timeline that we have created for ourselves and a wait that makes us nothing but anxious. Focusing on just one aspect of our life, something which isn’t even in our control stops us from relishing all the other aspects altogether and makes us unhappy. And this unhappiness starts to affect our other relationships as well and adds on to the anxiety and frustration within us.

In all retrospect, we ourselves create this cage of uneasy feelings and emotions that trap us. We feel that we are in race against a timeline that we set for ourselves and we need to fulfil the expectations that we have for our life. So in reality it is us who carries the key to let ourselves out of this self made prison. The key essentially is to love ourselves and our life for what it is, instead of what it can be or what it should be.

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance” – Oscar Wilde