What was I searching for?

I was constantly in a search. “Findologist”. I think that is what your 20s and 30s are meant to be. If you are not lost in those years, then how would you find yourself? I wonder now, in my late 40s. From a very assuring teenager, you enter the real world in your 20s, or in “my times,” that’s how we all did. There was no choice of gap years, hibernation, or travel-to-find-yourself happening for us. You finish school and get into an institution that is supposed to make you the professional you were destined to be, but by whose choice — I have no idea. Gring yourself in academics to fit in a mold, which was present then, was the norm.

So, coming back to the search in my 20s, it began then. I had no idea what it was for: more money, more validation (not the social media kind; we didn’t have the gram then), more recognition as a professional/mother/partner, or the apt career for the skills I still hadn’t known to possess.

By your 30s, you are distracted by being a full-time something — in my case, it was being a mother. I loved it; the charge of shaping up a young individual is quite time-consuming and more than I thought it was. Not everyone should take up that task until you feel you have come into yourself. This coming to yourself didn’t happen in my case in my 20s nor my 30s, so the damage is done; already, I added another to the billions without much thought. So, in this…