Help, family celebrations remind me every year how much I’m not moving forward in life

La Daronne is the queen of not-so-stupid advice, covered with a large dose of more or less subtle humor. Here she is back to help a reader!

The question for Daronne

Dear Daronne,

I have an amazing, lovely, brilliant family. My parents have been a couple for almost 40 years and have done numerous projects together. Yet, every year, I leave family celebrations with a monstrous cockroach. I’m the eldest of three children and we get along very well. My brother and sister both have prestigious careers that seem to satisfy them. They have been in a relationship for several years with lovely partners and this year my little sister announced her pregnancy to us. I’m very happy for her, but…

I have none of that. I am 33 years old, single, without children, and I have never managed to find a job in my sector that allows me to live adequately. So I do a series of uninteresting or poorly paid jobs. I live in a shared apartment like I did 10 years ago and although I get along well with my roommates, I feel like I live like a teenager and am really the loser of the family. My parents tell me that they are proud of me, my brother and sister love me as I am, but compared to this winning family I feel like shit and it comes out even more during the holidays.

Help

Sandra

Daronne’s response

My little strawberry,

First of all, let me wish you a happy new year!

Parties represent an effective yet cruel way to evaluate our level of social success. Those who have checked all the boxes in the file winhave fun, the others, Not so much.

Romantic comedies love to give us a mean uncle who takes great pleasure in reminding the heroine of him Tick ​​Tock Tick Tock, the expiration date is approaching. Attention! If she doesn’t pull herself together soon, she’ll end up eaten by her cats. While she is allergic to cat hair. A shame!

In real life, the role of this uncle who is too extreme to be truly offensive is often embodied by our small inner voice and those around us whose gentleness quickly turns into condescension. It’s still…

I hate when clichés turn out to be true because it forces me to say clichés: life is not a competition, everyone has their own rhythms, as they can and as they want. Your existence is as good as that of your brothers and I’m sure it is just as beautiful or could become so.

On the apple tree of life the buds are located next to the chard apples

In the Disney cartoon Mulan, the aforementioned failed miserably in the test of life and was declared unfit for marriage. Her father tries to console her and tells her something like this: the flowers that bloom last on her are the most beautiful on her.

This metaphor makes no sense. The beauty of the flowers is in no way affected by the flowering date. On the tree of life there are no seasons. Each sprouts and withers at its own pace, as often as necessary.

However, I think there are many more people who find their voice later in life than we think. As much as we are focused on their peers who have been on the path to excellence since high school, we don’t see these 30-year-olds once enrolled in defeat. And poof, one day, they arrive with the Nobel Peace Prize, the formula for the universal vaccine against gastroenteritis, or simply serenity in their hearts.

The thousand lives of life

Half of couples separate and the children are never what we expected. All these professional successes are generally the result of decisions made very early in a long-lasting life, the sustainability of which is no longer guaranteed or even desired. I mean, we still live in an era where executives collectively dream of abandoning their jobs and their comfortable lives to grow root vegetables.

This does not mean that your loved ones will fail, nor that you should reassure yourself by imagining their future difficulties, happiness is not something you can take from some and give to others. This just means that we often have multiple lives and that the one you lead today will perhaps be led by your sister in a few years. Although I sincerely hope he doesn’t suffer from it.

Again this is literally true. Sometimes a meeting or event is enough to revolutionize your life.

And you in all this?

Each family has its own mythology, and indeed its own ” Ugly duckling “. It is generally unconscious, but once the roles are distributed it becomes difficult to escape. I can only advise you to sort all this out with a psychologist and ask yourself what you really want. A good job and a fulfilling love life don’t mean much, since these two terms are so vague.

It’s best to start by defining concrete goals: what values, what sector, what training is available at your age? Great successes are never more than small steps that add up to each other. The same goes for your love life: what kind of setup would you like? Exclusive? Free ? And what qualities do you look for in one or more partners? These are questions to be answered to better understand your real needs and not those that arise under the pretext that your family has ticked all the boxes in a raffle created by social constraints.

As for me, for this year, here is the good resolution I impose on you: explore two new hobbies that could be right for you. Macramé, Thai boxing, cross-country skiing, cooking, whatever, as long as you like it. The idea is not to monetize these hobbies, nor to find your life’s passion, but just to broaden your horizons and do yourself some good.

I’m leaving you, I have to finish my scoobidoo,

The kiss,

Your Daronne

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