Trying to make the boss happy, trying to make the wife understand, trying to make the children proud of me. But it's really tiring.
One truth is that fatigue does not come from having to do too much, but from having to live as a version that makes others feel secure and satisfied.
Many people grow up in that feeling without being able to name them. Life still flows, still learns, still does, still tries to complete the things that need to be completed, but somewhere in my heart there is always a silent pressure: I have to be okay, have to move forward, have something beautiful enough to tell when someone asks about my life.
My friend said: "Living long in that feeling is very tiring. When I was young, I used to think that the biggest fatigue of a person is probably poverty, failure, or being crushed by life. Later, I realized that there are people who do not live in too bad circumstances but are still tired for many years, not because they have nothing, but because they always feel like they have to become someone different from the present.
It must be the child that makes the family proud. It must be someone with a clear future. It must be someone who knows where they are going. It must have achievements that are beautiful enough to speak out without shyness. Those things do not always come from malice. Sometimes it comes from family expectations, from the eyes of peers, and many times from myself after too many years of being used to looking at myself through the measures of others.
We sat together, talking about a person who was once expected, who once believed that he had to become special, had to stand out, had to have achievements to have a reason to be proud when someone asked "How are you doing these days?". But then when he was 50 years old, that person realized that: Normality is not failure, not being outstanding does not mean you are regressing, and most of life is inherently days without anything too great. That is exactly what makes me feel very right: Many years, people are tired not because life is too harsh, but because they have to restrain themselves to live up to expectations placed on them too early.
Young people now ask the question: "What if life is not brilliant?". In fact, everyone is responsible for their own life, no one can replace them. People's lives don't always have something to tell. There are stages where you just go to work, come home, live day by day, try to keep your mind from getting confused. There are years when the only thing you can do is not give up. If you keep using other people's imaginations to measure, that period of life will look very meaningless. But if you look closer, maybe even in those years without anything outstanding, you are learning how to live your own life.
Then at some point, perhaps everyone has to learn a very small thing again: I don't need to live as a beautiful answer to others. I just need to live so that when I'm alone, I don't find my life too strange. I don't need to always have something to tell, nor do I need to always prove that I'm going in the right direction. There are stages when I just need to live decently, keep myself, and not abandon myself, that's enough.
