Pradip Parajuli

Paul Baltes, a German psychologist, once said development is all about loss and gain. The image that illustrated above, I saw on the Facebook  a few days ago and that made me struck. I was so thoughtful that OMG!! As deterioration in health and strength; the professional career will also be declined as per the age. Like in the picture – a person standing on a staircase pausing at 50 and gazing forward into unknown. For me, it felt like more than just an illustration; it was a mirror how life moves like a river flawlessly and sometimes and somewhere it stops.

Our life is filled with dreams, struggles, learning, transformations and so on. In our 20s, life feels like an exploration of ambition and curiosity, believing that most of the things are possible. By 30, we tend to balance our dreams with responsibilities. The climb becomes hard, but we go ahead with the purpose and dreams.

Reaching 40s and 50s often brings a pause; and we do retrospect of what we have achieved so far. Also, in this phase we sometimes find ourselves looking ahead, wondering what’s next. The world behind us feels familiar and the path ahead is uncertain. That’s the beauty of standing in the middle of our journey.

The steps beyond 60 and 70 remind us that the journey continues through at a different pace; but it’s no longer about ambition and such scientific SMART goals about career and future aspirations, but meaning and existence. We can’t glance at the entire staircase from these steps, but it offers perspective like– wisdom, calm, and gratitude that we didn’t have before.

In my opinion life is not a race up the stairs. Every decade is worth living and it possesses a value, not just for where it leads but for what it teaches. Sometimes, moment of pause to look ahead—or even to look back – is the most important step of all.