Young adulthood is one of the loveliest, yet most trying times in an individual's life. Half of your friends are either married with children, miscellaneously partying through their college years, or somewhere in between. Some suffer from the pressures of following in their family footsteps at their illustrious alma mater. Some deal with the stress of being a first-generation college student, who are afraid to let their family down. The most important concept to understand is that everyone moves in their own way at their own pace.

You are not expected to move at the same pace as your peers. Society has made it a point to place a time limit on every single event in life. You're expected to finish college in four years. After that, you experience the post-graduate pressures of being forced to find a job within your field or suffering through another few years of school, not to mention having enough job experience to create a legitimate resume. Aside from this, we are expected to find our "soul mate" and have children all before the age of 30. I'm here to say: society is stupid. To hell with the rules. Time may be of the essence, but continue to move at your own pace.

Life is far from a movie. There is no script. There are no guidelines. Simply, you and a lifetime full of choices have the capability of being altered at any given moment. There will be countless opinions and numerous critiques of the way you should move. But at the end of the day, it is your life and no one else's. Opinions are welcomed but never needed. Ultimately, you are the only person who knows what is best for you (even if the person giving the opinion carried you within her womb for 9 months). While we should never emotionally shut down or close off from our inner emotional being, we should not allow others' thoughts and motives to influence our personal choices.

In my 21 trips around the sun, I have encountered so many people who wish they had the opportunity to start over or "go back in time" to make different decisions. In actuality, every day is a chance to start a new and begin doing what is best for you. Everyone's definition of success is different. The route to the end goal does not matter as long as you continue to vivaciously and eagerly press forward.