Lessons I Learned Before Turning 40: Lesson 03

03: Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana

I first heard Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana when I was in my early twenties, during university, when I joined a programme with Japanese friends. I didn't know then that a simple melody and a few borrowed lyrics would stay with me for years. The message is simple and beautiful: we are all unique flowers. There is no need to be number one.

I spent most of my twenties and early thirties operating on a hidden timeline. A mental checklist I never actually wrote down, but somehow always felt. I should have achieved this. By that age, I should be there. I should have figured things out by now. Nobody handed me this list. I built it myself, brick by brick. And then I spent years feeling crushed beneath its weight.

I watched my friends move through life. Someone got married. Someone bought a house. Someone got promoted. Someone started a business. Someone seemed to know exactly what they were doing. And I was genuinely happy for them. I really was. But somewhere underneath all that happiness, I questioned myself. Am I falling behind?

Here's what I wish I had understood sooner, that life is not a competition where everyone starts at the same point, runs along the same track, and is supposed to cross the finish line at the same time.

There are things in my own life that took longer than I expected. There were seasons when I felt like I was standing still while everyone else was moving forward. There were so many things I thought would have happened by now that didn't.

I am finally making peace with the fact that my life doesn't have to follow the timeline I once imagined. I don't have to arrive somewhere just because I thought I should have arrived there by now.