Life, as we all know, is not a straight line. There’s no concrete set of stages which every person passes through according to the same timetable. You’re not under any obligation to finish your education, raise a family, or start a career by a certain age. You don’t have to get married at 25 and become an executive at 30. You’re allowed to take a diversion, to take a break from it all, if you want to or need to. You have every right to take the time to find out what exactly it is that gives meaning to your life, to you personally. It’s not surprising that we often forget about this; we were all forced to start planning our lives when we were still sitting in the classroom (you know what I’m talking about: ’I want to go to this university...I want this job’). We might hate our jobs, but we still go to work every day, because we think we have to complete the plan. We drift along, trying to complete each step one at a time, in the belief that ticking off each box on the list is the route to happiness. And then one morning, we wake up feeling depressed. We feel crushed, and we don’t know why. That’s how we ruin our lives. And we do it in plenty of other ways, too.