Ready

I was just listening to my boss's story about one relative who keeps giving excuses on getting a career. She has just finished her degree, but have been staying home for the past 7 months. She's an excellent straight-A's student, from elementary to university, but according to her, the companies are not accepting her for the job. They've did a few research, and found out that instead of the companies not accepting her, she's the one who actually turned down offers.

In my personal opinion, this is a psychological issue. You are the best in school, the best in university. Therefore you want to maintain that excellence, but, you know that, once you step into the working world, you're joe average. You will have to start ALL OVER AGAIN to build yourself, because this time, instead of competing intelligence amongst people your age in the same education line, you are thrown into a world of pure complexity. I believe, that she is suffering from the fear of letting go of her protected little world.

Every stage in life, we sacrifice, downgrade or postpone something. When we step from the education world into the working world. We sacrifice protection. There are no more guides from teachers, some guidance from parents, but mostly, the workload, stress, pressure, timelines will mold you for your furtherance of existence. Your annual future will no longer be from a week of exams from 3 months of cramping yourself with information, but purely your skills, attitude and accomplishments to what your job entails of you. It's a totally different ballgame.

When we step into marriage, we either sacrifice, downgrade or postpone passion and individual hobbies/dreams. When we step into parenthood, we sacrifice or downgrade great ambition that we have not yet achieved. The reason is simple, with every step into more responsibility, you face several losses that you used to have; time, freedom and energy. They are divided into your now added responsibilities.

The keyword here is ready-ness. You do not move to the next facet in life unless you are ready for it. For as long as you're not ready, and you move into the next step, you would usually find regret. However, READY have a deadline. You HAVE to be ready for work by the time you're 30. You HAVE to be ready for parenthood (if you want children) by the time you're 50, or else you'll find a huge gap between your age and the children, where on one side we have an agile monster while the other is currently weakening.

Be ready, or else, force yourself to be ready. To push yourself into the next stage in life without being ready will only cause regret further on in life. With every step into new responsibilities, you find yourself losing a few things; time, freedom and energy. These are divided into the added responsibilities of your life, and either you have to accept them, or, accept that you would need to sacrifice creating a rift in family relationships due to neglect.