We keep postponing life to the next stage, and each stage does the same.
Dr. Ashraf Zainabi
Ask anyone in Kashmir when life will finally feel settled, and you will hear a sentence beginning with after.After the exams. After the job. After the daughter’s wedding. After the son finds his feet. We say it so often and so naturally that we forget it is a promise made to a future that never quite arrives. An ordinary life passes through four stages, and each has its own thirst.
(a) The Thirst For Education: The student asks, What can I become? Our homes are full of this hunger. A child’s marks are discussed in the kitchen, at weddings and over dinner. Coaching centres fill up, and parents sacrifice quietly so that a degree may open a door.The young person carries a silent belief: my real life will begin once I get through this. But life has already begun. The friendships, the curiosity, the late-night conversations and the freedom from serious responsibility are all happening now, and we call them preparation.
(b) The Thirst For Livelihood: Then comes work, and the question changes to How will I build my life?A secure job, a decent salary, a house and some savings become the measure of a settled existence. In a place where opportunities have never been plentiful, this pursuit is no vanity. It is a serious struggle, and it deserves respect.Yet here too the mind whispers, once I am secure, I will slow down. Security, however, has a curious habit. The moment we reach it, we see something further to secure.
(c) The Thirst For Belonging: Marriage and family follow, and with them the sweetest and heaviest years. There are children’s laughter, parents’ prayers, school fees, medical bills and a hundred obligations. Life becomes less about meand more about us.This is when happiness is postponed most gracefully, because we postpone it for people we love. Once the children settle, I will rest. And then, almost without warning, the children do settle. They grow tall, leave the house for university or work, and the rooms grow quiet.
(d) The Thirst For Meaning: Retirement and old age bring the question we avoided for decades: What was it all for? The alarm clock falls silent and the daily rush ends. Time, which we always craved, arrives in abundance and sometimes feels heavy.This is the most neglected stage. We plan for education, careers and weddings, but rarely for the years when the question is no longer What should I achieve?but What should I do with the life I have left?Money helps, but it cannot answer that. Health, companionship, faith, purpose and a place in the community can. Look at the four stages together and a pattern appears. The student waits for a job, the worker waits for stability, the parent waits for the children to settle, and the elder wishes he had noticed the earlier years while they lasted.Each stage lives in the waiting room of the next.Ask elderly people what they miss and few will say a promotion or a bank balance. They will say the noise of a full house, the walk to school with friends, the first months of a small job, or a winter evening when the whole family sat in one room. Those moments felt ordinary then. Memory has made them golden.
“True living means being fully present in every stage of life—student, worker, parent, or elder—rather than deferring happiness to future milestones. Just as Kashmir’s chinar tree embraces each season wholeheartedly, we must engage deeply in the present moment, as no stage of life can be lived twice.”
Psychologists suggest a reason. Unpleasant feelings tend to fade faster than pleasant ones, so the exam stress, the money worries and the sleepless nights soften, while the warmth remains. Distance is a generous editor. But it edits only after the moment has passed. So, coming back to the question, Is there really a perfect stage in ones life?People often ask which stage is the best. Students envy the earning, the earning envy the carefree, and the elderly envy the young. I do not think any stage wins. Each one gives something and takes something. Study offers freedom but little money. Work offers money but little time. Family offers belonging but little rest. Old age offers time but less energy.
There is some comfort in the research, too.
Many studies of life satisfaction across the world find a U-shaped curve, with contentment dipping in the busy middle years, read midlife squeeze theory, and rising again later. The finding is debated, but its message is hopeful: a well-lived old age, with health, relationships and purpose, can be happier than we fear. So perhaps the best stage of life is simply the one we are fully present in.This does not mean giving up ambition or planning. A student should study hard, a worker should build a career, and a parent should provide. It means doing all this while actually being there. For the student, it means enjoying learning and not only counting marks.
For the worker, it means leaving the office at some point and remembering that the family at home is not a project to finish later. For the parent, it means sitting with the children today, because the house will not be noisy forever. For the elder, it means treating these years as a new beginning: teaching, writing, mentoring, praying, tending the garden, or simply being a presence in someone’s life. And for all of us, it means asking, occasionally and honestly: Am I here, or am I waiting? The Kashmir’s chinar tree gives us a lesson. Every autumn, the chinar trees of Kashmir turn gold and red. They do not hold back the colour for a better season. They do not wait for spring to be beautiful. Each season, the tree is wholly what that season asks of it. We could learn from that. Our green years of study, our summer of work, our golden autumn of family and our quiet winter of post retirement reflection. The perfect time to live is not after the degree, the job, the wedding or the retirement. The perfect time is the one stage we can never live twice.
(The author is Assistant Professor Design Innovation Centre –DIC Islamic University of Science & Technology (IUST) Awantipora, J&K. The views, opinions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”)
