As we browse our Facebook feeds, we can’t help but notice that 90 percent of the content is posts about wedding proposals, sonogram photos or how “big” the baby is getting. All very important milestones in life, but we can’t help but to think that this will eventually be our lives. It’s the social norm to get married, buy a house, have a couple of kids and live the rest of our lives just like everyone else. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it all seems to be happening too quickly.

It feels like yesterday we were packing up the car to move into our college dorm, and now every corner we turn, someone else is getting married or having a child. And not that we’re not happy for them, but it reminds us that our lives are coming to that point where we say “and this is the rest of our lives.” It’s all happening too fast and we can’t do anything to make it stop or even slow down for a little while.

That being said, we must make as many memories as we possibly can before our memories are just faint shadows of many days passed. Never underestimate the ability of a single memory to bring back a flood of days passed we could’ve entirely forgot we had lived. Living our lives to their fullest potential is the only option we have. Otherwise we waste away days that could be spent loving the people that mean the most to us or soaking up the sun while we still have blocks of time in our schedules to do nothing in particular.

As we live our ever developing lives, never lose sight of the dreams that we set out to accomplish for ourselves. Whether that be working our dream career, writing a novel, forming a rock band or traveling across the globe, goals are goals. It’s easy to get distracted, and at times our goals may change to adapt to our new lifestyles. But never let us look back and regret letting our dreams take the back seat to the complications that life was throwing at us in the moment. It’s funny how we can grow up wanting a life for ourselves that we’ve planned over and over again in our minds and then 20 years later realizing that we’re in a completely different place with people that we never imagined we would meet.

Life is a game that’s more complex than the card we are dealt. We cannot plan for every bump and valley that will challenge our willpower or every peak that will force us to stay grounded when we feel as if we had just conquered the world. Our lives may end up mirroring those of others, but every game comes with a set of rules to follow. It’s our choice to follow the rules of the game or choose a life better suited to our ambitions.