When I was younger, I thought there would come a point in life when I’d finally have everything figured out.
I wasn’t sure exactly when that would happen. Maybe 30. Maybe 40. Surely by 50.
Apparently, I was mistaken.
Because here I am, approaching 50, and I’ve recently come to a rather interesting realization.
I never had it figured out in the first place.
I thought I understood marriage, relationships, parenting, friendships, and all the things that come with being an adult. I had opinions, expectations, and ideas about how life was supposed to work.
And looking back, I realize how much I really didn’t know.
Which has me wondering something.
Do we ever actually figure it out?
The Advice We Weren’t Ready to Hear
Think about all the advice we received when we were younger.
Our parents gave us advice. Our grandparents shared their wisdom. People who had already lived through things tried to tell us what they’d learned.
And how much of it did we actually listen to?
I can only speak for myself, but I certainly thought I knew a thing or two.
I remember my brother writing something on a plate that everyone signed at my wedding.
He wrote, “It’s not 50/50 in a relationship. It’s 100%.”
At the time, I don’t think I fully appreciated what he meant.
Now, years later, I understand those words differently.
A relationship isn’t always about dividing everything equally. Sometimes one person has more to give than the other. Sometimes life gets hard, and someone needs the other person to carry a little more.
But both people have to be willing to show up.
It’s interesting how a few words can mean one thing when you’re young and something entirely different after you’ve lived a little.
The advice didn’t change.
We did.
And that brings me to something else I’ve been thinking about.
We’re Constantly Evolving
Who we are at 25 isn’t necessarily who we are at 50.
And I imagine who we are at 75 will be different still.
We change because life changes us. Our relationships change. Our circumstances change. Our priorities shift. Things we once believed with absolute certainty don’t always seem so certain anymore.
Sometimes we learn by listening to others. Sometimes we learn by watching the people around us.
And sometimes there are things we simply cannot fully understand until we’ve experienced them ourselves.
You can listen to someone tell you what they’ve been through. You can sympathize with them, offer advice, and genuinely believe you understand.
But there’s a difference between knowing that something happens and knowing what it feels like when it happens to you.
And here’s something else I’ve realized.
Not everybody will experience the same things in life.
Some people will face challenges that others may never encounter. Some will experience certain things much earlier in life than others. And some people may go their entire lives without ever having to understand a particular kind of struggle.
I guess that’s just how the cards are dealt.
Age Doesn’t Always Equal Understanding
I was recently talking with my son’s girlfriend, who is in her 20s and a single mother.
As we talked, I realized that she understood certain things I’ve been thinking about and experiencing.
Not because she’s lived as many years as I have, but because she’s faced some similar struggles.
And honestly, I hate that for her.
I hate that she’s had to experience certain difficulties at such a young age. There are things I wish she hadn’t needed to learn yet.
But our conversation made me realize something.
Some lessons don’t come with birthdays. They come with experiences.
Here I am, approaching 50, having conversations with someone in her 20s who understands certain things about life because she’s already lived through something similar.
And that really got me thinking.
We tend to associate wisdom with age. We assume that someone who’s lived 60 or 70 years must understand more about life than someone who’s only lived 25.
And in some ways, maybe they do.
But not necessarily about everything.
Someone who’s 25 may understand something that someone who’s 70 has never experienced. And someone who’s 70 may still be learning lessons they never imagined they’d have to learn.
That doesn’t mean experiencing hardship automatically makes someone wiser. And it certainly doesn’t mean anyone should have to suffer to learn something.
It just means our understanding of life is shaped by what we’ve lived through.
And no two people have lived exactly the same life.
The Things We Thought We Knew
I think about how certain I was of things when I was younger.
What marriage was supposed to look like. How I would raise my children. The kind of person I thought I’d always be. The way I assumed certain situations should be handled.
And I wonder how many of those opinions came from actual understanding and how many came from simply believing I knew.
Because there’s a big difference.
It’s easy to have an opinion about something you’ve never experienced.
It’s another thing entirely when life puts you in that situation.
Suddenly, things aren’t always as black and white as they once seemed.
There are circumstances you never considered. Feelings you didn’t anticipate. Decisions that look completely different when you’re the one who has to make them.
And sometimes you realize that the people you once questioned were navigating situations you didn’t fully understand.
I don’t think that means we should stop having opinions or convictions.
But maybe it means recognizing that our perspective is limited to what we know right now.
And what we know right now isn’t necessarily what we’ll understand ten or twenty years from now.
The Woman I’ll Be at 75
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately.
I’m almost 50, and there are things I understand today that I couldn’t possibly have understood at 25.
But what about 75?
What will that version of me understand that I can’t see right now?
What will she look back on and think I had completely wrong?
What advice would she give me today that I probably wouldn’t fully appreciate until another 25 years had passed?
It’s a strange thought.
Because at 25, I probably thought the woman I am today would have all the answers.
And now that I’m almost 50, I know she doesn’t.
So who’s to say the woman I’ll be at 75 won’t be looking back at me thinking, Oh, honey. You still had so much to learn.
And maybe she will.
Maybe there are things I’m absolutely certain about today that I’ll see completely differently in another 25 years.
Not necessarily because I was wrong about everything, but because I’ll have lived another 25 years of experiences I can’t possibly predict.
Which brings me back to the question that started all of this.
Do We Ever Really Figure It Out?
When we’re young, we look at adults and assume they know what they’re doing.
Our parents seem to have the answers. Our grandparents seem to understand life in ways we don’t.
And we imagine that one day we’ll reach that point ourselves.
We’ll grow up. Build careers. Raise families. Make decisions. Experience life.
And somewhere along the way, we’ll finally figure it all out.
Except now I’m wondering if those adults we looked up to were figuring things out as they went, too.
Maybe they were learning lessons we couldn’t understand yet while still facing questions of their own.
Maybe they were just doing the best they could with what they knew at the time.
The older I get, the more I realize how much of life I once thought I understood without ever having experienced it.
And the more I recognize that we’re constantly changing as we move through different stages of life.
Some lessons come early. Some come later. Some we learn from the people around us. And some we may never learn because life simply doesn’t deal us those particular cards.
I spent a good portion of my younger life believing that one day I’d have everything figured out.
Now I’m approaching 50 and realizing I never did.
Not even close.
And it leaves me with a question I honestly never thought to ask when I was younger.
Do we ever really figure life out? Or do we just keep discovering how much we didn’t know?
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