The Race Begins Early
Most Indians grow up believing happiness is something you earn after achievement. From childhood itself, rewards become so deeply attached to milestones that we slowly begin to believe milestones are what make life meaningful.
Pass your exams, and we’ll take you on a holiday. Turn seven, and maybe you’ll finally get the cycle you wanted. Do well in your 10th boards and you’ll get into a good college. Clear your 12th, and maybe science is still an option.
Without even realising it, we begin to see life in one pattern: achieve first, be happy later.
And for women especially, the milestones only become heavier with age. Marriage by your mid-twenties. Children before thirty. A stable career somewhere in between. Somewhere along the way, life starts feeling less like living and more like constantly preparing for the next checkpoint.
What makes it worse is that many of us also grew up in environments where comparison became normal very early in life. There was always another child scoring higher, getting into a better college or appearing more accomplished. Achievement slowly stopped feeling personal and became comparative instead.
The Grass Always Looks Greener
As adults, that conditioning quietly follows us into everything else.
Someone is getting married before us. Someone is buying a house sooner. Someone seems more successful, more settled, more ahead in life. And without even realising it, many of us begin living with the constant feeling that the grass must be greener somewhere else.
Somewhere between deadlines, expectations, and constantly preparing for the next milestone, many women stop asking themselves a much simpler question:
What actually makes me happy every day?
Not once a year on vacation. Not after a promotion. Not after some future version of life finally arrives. But every single day.
Small Joys Still Count
Maybe happiness is smaller than we’ve been taught to believe.
Maybe it is the ten quiet minutes of chai before the household hurricane begins. Maybe it is putting on your favourite playlist during a crowded Mumbai commute and mentally disappearing into your own little world for half an hour.
Maybe it is the slow walk after dinner where you notice familiar aunties and uncles in the neighbourhood and wonder what your own future will look like someday.
For me, it is my morning workout. One uninterrupted hour where I stop performing for the world and simply exist.
As modern Indian women, we spend so much of our lives trying to become good daughters, partners, employees, wives, mothers and friends that we sometimes forget to nurture the relationship we have with ourselves.
And maybe Samantha Jones was right when she said:
“I love you, but I love me more. I’ve been in a relationship with myself for 49 years, and that’s the one I need to work on.”
Not in a selfish way, but in the deeply necessary way women are rarely taught to.
Watering Your Own Grass
Maybe the problem is that we were taught to chase greener grass instead of learning how to water our own.
Because a fulfilling life is rarely built through dramatic milestones alone. Milestones are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated when they arrive, but they were never meant to become the entire point of living.
A meaningful life cannot only consist of five big moments stretched across decades. It also has to exist in the ordinary spaces in between — in routines, playlists, walks, workouts, conversations and small moments of joy that belong only to you.
The grass becomes greener where you choose to water it.
And maybe that is the real shift adulthood requires from us. Not giving up on ambition or milestones, but learning to build a life that also feels good on ordinary Tuesday mornings.
Because in the end, a meaningful life is mostly ordinary days.
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