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Gaya

&nbsp;Nobody sat you down and said, okay, here is the definition, here is the timeline, here is exactly what your life should look like at 25, at 28, at 30, and here is what it means about you if it doesn't. Nobody said any of that out loud. They didn't have to. You just absorbed it. Through every LinkedIn post that started with "humbled to announce." Through every Lagos Instagram story that was just someone's new car and a caption that said "God did" but really said, "are you watching?"

Now here you are. Running. Towards something. You're not entirely sure what it is anymore, but you know you're supposed to be moving faster.

Close the tab with your emails. Put down whatever you're supposed to be doing and answer this honestly, not the version you'd say out loud, not the one that sounds good, the actual answer:

Not your mother. Not your mates from university who seem to be ascending in real time. Not whoever you follow on Instagram who just bought land and announced it with a very specific caption about trusting the process. You. What does it look like when you get there? What are you actually chasing?

Now here's the follow up question, and this is the one that actually stings: did you choose that definition? Or did it choose you?

&nbsp;At some point, you were probably a teenager, maybe younger, a picture got installed in your head. What success looks like. What arrival looks like. What the proof is that you have done it, that you are not behind, that your life is going somewhere and that picture was built from everything around you. Your parents' fears. Your environment. What the people ahead of you seemed to be doing. What got celebrated versus what got quietly ignored. What made adults nod approvingly versus what made them change the subject.

You did not sit down and build that picture yourself. You just woke up one day already inside it. Already measuring your life against it. Already feeling behind on a schedule you never agreed to.

The worst part? The definition keeps moving. You finish school, and suddenly the thing is a job. You get the job, and suddenly the thing is your own place. You get your own place, and suddenly the thing is a relationship. You get the relationship, and suddenly the thing is a ring, a baby, a house, more money, a bigger title. There is always a next thing, and the next thing is always just out of reach, and that is not an accident. That is the whole design. Keep you moving so you never stop long enough to ask if you actually want to end up where you are going.

We need to talk about Lagos Instagram specifically because it has done something genuinely unhinged to an entire generation's sense of self.

You open your phone and within thirty seconds you have seen three promotion announcements, someone's engagement, someone's new car, someone's apartment tour, and someone's business that has apparently been "doing numbers" since they pivoted last quarter. Everyone is ascending. Everyone is building. Everyone is moving in silence and then announcing at full volume.

What you are not seeing and will never see is what any of it actually cost. The debt. The burnout. The relationship that photographs beautifully and feels like a negotiation in private. The business that is thriving on the grid and struggling in the books. Nobody posts that. Nobody captions a mirror selfie "genuinely uncertain whether any of this is what I want, but the light was nice today."

So you are comparing your entire interior, your doubts, your restlessness, the calculations you do at 2am, to everyone else's highlight reel. And you are losing a competition that isn't even real. Against people who are also losing competitions that aren't real. It is a pyramid scheme of perceived success and we are all in it.

Here is the thing about your parents' definition of making it. It made sense for them. It genuinely did. They were navigating a different Nigeria, different pressures, different stakes. For a lot of them, making it meant stability, security, enough. A job with a pension. A house that belonged to them. Children who didn't have to struggle the way they struggled. That was the dream, and it was a legitimate dream, and they worked incredibly hard for it.

However, their destination is your destination. The map they used gets you where you actually want to go. Your parents can love you completely, sacrifice enormously for you, want nothing but good things for you, and still be handing you directions to a life that was never meant for you. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and pretending otherwise is not gratitude.&nbsp;

This feeling of being behind. Can we sit with that for a second.

Behind what? Behind who? On whose calendar did someone write that you are supposed to have certain things locked in by certain ages? Who made that schedule? Where is the document? Because we have been looking for it, and we cannot find it. What we can find is a lot of people saying it with enough confidence that it started to sound like fact. It is not fact. It is just noise that got repeated until it became pressure that became the voice in your head at 3am telling you that you are running out of time.

You are not behind. You are just measuring yourself against a timeline that was never yours. So we're asking again. And we want you to actually answer it this time.

What does making it mean to you? The real version. The one that exists before you perform it for anyone. The one that lives in the quiet before your phone lights up and the world starts again. The one you would build if Instagram went dark and your family couldn't see your choices and there was no group chat watching.

How different is it from what you are currently running towards?

And what exactly are you going to do about the gap?

We don't have the answer. That's not what this is. But we are absolutely refusing to let you scroll past the question without feeling it properly. Even if just for today. Even if just for the length of this piece.

Everyone around you seems to be making it. But nobody ever stopped to ask you what making it actually means to you or whether you chose that definition yourself.

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