When It Feels Like Everyone Else Is Flying

For anyone who’s felt left behind while the world surged ahead

You already know this. I’m just here to remind you.

There were days I thought the world had taken off without me. Like I was standing on a train platform holding a ticket that no one would ever come to collect. Invitations to go further, be more, arrive seemed reserved for everyone else. I watched friends glow with milestones, scrolling past them in a blur, wondering what it said about me that I hadn't yet caught up.

But eventually, I learned something I want you to remember: not all journeys leave from the same gate. Some begin quieter, slower. Some ask you to sit with the waiting: find meaning from it rather than try to escape it. I see now how I mistook quiet seasons for failure, when really, they were a kind of fertile stillness. Something was deepening in me, getting ready.

You aren't behind. You're just becoming in ways that don't always photograph well. Some of our richest growth happens like roots in winter, anchoring us for what’s ahead. Everyone else's highlight reel can't reveal the full terrain of their struggle. And you don't owe anyone a timeline but your own.

I know it’s hard to feel worthy in a world so loud with progress. But what makes you you is not measured in pace. It's in how you notice things, how you stay when it would be easier to run, how you keep showing up even when no one is clapping. That quiet perseverance is not the absence of movement, it’s your becoming, unfolding in its own time.

You have not missed your life. It’s here, now, moving with you. And when things do begin to shift, as they always do, you'll look back and see how even this slow stretch was guiding you more truly than you ever knew.

🪞 Reflection & Journal Prompt:
What parts of you are still becoming? How might you honor that unfolding without rushing it?

🧭 Compass Point to carry all week: I am not late to my life. I am right on time for who I’m becoming.

— From a Future You, who already knows you’re getting there.

p.s. from Rex: I remember in my earlier career watching another lawyer seem to sprint ahead, in their career, their relationships, all of it. I felt like I was treading water. But now, I see how that season I once mourned was one of the most formative. It gave me things I wouldn’t trade for anything now. Sometimes the delay holds that golden nugget we only recognize later.