AS I approach my 30s, a quiet fear follows me. I am single, and sometimes I feel like I am still living with the habits and mindset of my younger years. I play, I delay, I wonder. Even with a good and stable job, I ask myself an honest question: will I truly survive the years ahead, or am I simply getting by?
I often think of my mother. When she had her first child, she was only twenty four. She was young, yet strong. Life was not easy for her, but she endured. She built a family, carried responsibilities early, and survived a world that demanded maturity sooner than it does now. Looking at her story makes me reflect, but it also reminds me that comparison is not always fair.
We live in a different time.
I am shaped by two generations. I grew up between Millennials and Gen Z. I witnessed the world change before my eyes, from analog to digital, from handwritten letters to instant messages, from keypad phones to smartphones that never leave our hands. I benefited from technology, education, and access to information, yet I also inherited a constant noise that never truly stops.
This makes me wonder if the rapid shift is partly why so many of us feel tired, anxious, and sad. We are always connected, always informed, always expected to do more. We compare our lives to curated images and achievements online, forgetting that behind every screen is another person struggling silently. In the middle of this, I sometimes feel useless, even when people believe in me and expect more from me. That contradiction is heavy. To feel unworthy while being needed is a quiet kind of pain.
I ask myself if this feeling is random, or if it is simply loneliness wearing a familiar face.
There are articles and studies that speak about chronic stress, how it keeps people in a constant state of fight or flight, slowly wearing down the body and the soul. Our generation carries invisible burdens. We worry about the future, about finances, about purpose, about whether we are already falling behind in a race we never agreed to join. Stress is everywhere, and rest feels undeserved.
Still, I am learning to pause.
I remind myself that pressure does not mean failure, and uncertainty does not mean I am lost. Faith grounds me when everything feels unstable. God is good, even when life feels confusing. Provision may not come the way I expect, but it comes in ways that sustain me.
To those who feel the same weight, especially my fellow Gen Zs, we are not broken. We are responding to a world that moves too fast and asks too much. Let us stop comparing our timelines to those before us and to those beside us. Let us choose patience, self compassion, and honesty with ourselves.
We will survive this season. Not by rushing, not by pretending to have it all together, but by loving ourselves first, then learning how to love others. Slowly. Genuinely. One step at a time.
- George Evan Borinaga Cuadrillero