Living our own lives

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It is important to live our own lives, to take our own responsibilities, make our own decisions, and learn about life and ourselves in the process.

And yet, probably all of us have heard from someone older than us something like: “When I was young…” And then the story starts about how those were good times, or hard times. Almost all the time things were either way better than life is now; or way worse…
But in essence things in the old days the air was cleaner, the sun was brighter, the seasons were more succinct; in short, life was simpler.

In all fairness, there isn't anything wrong with comparing notes on how different generations have grown up. It is part of our family history. It also points out the differences; how far we have come since then.
I for one, I am very happy with laptops, mobile phones, and reliable cars; things I didn’t grow up with…

It does get to be a different picture when parents start living vicariously; when they start pushing their children to achieve the things they themselves didn’t when they were young. For whatever the reason. But as soon as the generation starts living life through their children; or even start pushing to live their children’s life ~ they are not living their own lives any longer…

Another way through which we may stop living our own lives is when we start coveting the life of others. When we see something in the life of someone else we feel is lacking in our own lives; we may imagine that the live that other person is living is way easier, way more fun, way better supported than our own lives have ever been. And what begins with a wish that our own lives were a little bit easier, may become something we focus on more an more, until that point when we find ourselves being jealous  of that other person. Or at least of the situation they are finding themselves in.

The problem is twofold.
First, all the time we are spending focusing on the life of that other person, we are not living our own lives ~ at least not to the fullest extend.
Second, we don’t really know where that other person is coming from. It may be clear to us that their live is different than ours; so much so that we perceive it as being easier than ours. Yet, more often than not, that is not the case. Their lives are almost always just as hard as our own lives; they are just different. With problems in different areas (which may be easy for us to solve, but not for them…)

All in all, and for any number of reasons, there is a lot to be said for focusing on living our own lives.
For making living our own lives working for us…
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