What If I’ve Already Reached The High Point of My Life?

Is it all downhill from here? Or will things get better?

Photo by Joshua Bedford on Unsplash

This is a question I’ve been asking myself for the past couple of days. Has my life peaked? Have I experienced the best parts of my life already?

It might seem like a strange question to ask when you’re only 31, but the question has nestled itself in my mind and refuses to go away. The more I think about it, the more I start to wonder whether my best years are behind me.

To understand why I feel this way, it’s best to reflect on what I did previously. Once I graduated from university, I spent a year working in a betting shop. A job I wasn’t fond of and couldn’t wait to quit.

The day I did was euphoric. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. The good aspect of the job was it allowed me to save up a lot of money for something I’d wanted to do for as long as I could remember.

Live in Australia.

While it would only be for a year, it was an experience I yearned for forever since I set my eyes on Uluru (Ayers Rock) in an encyclopedia. I’d been enchanted with the land down under from then on.

Once I got there, my mind was blown. Not only was it as good as I thought it would be, it was better. The warm weather, the luxurious golden beaches, the freedom to go wherever I wanted. It was intoxicating.

Coming from the wet and windy north of England, it was like I’d discovered paradise! Setting myself up in cities like Adelaide, Brisbane, and Melbourne I made a fantastic bunch of friends and had one of the best years of my life.

It’s hard to understand how visceral the experience of bonding with people on your travels is unless you’ve travelled yourself. The space of time in which you get to know someone is shortened. The process is on steroids. You get to know and bond with people much quicker than you would in normal circumstances.

So much so you come to know them intimately in a matter of weeks and even days in some cases. While this is great for travelling, friendships are much easier to forge, it can be hard when the time comes to inevitably, say goodbye.

You’ve expanded so much emotional capital on making new friends, had a range of exhilarating experiences with one another and then it’s all over. It’s a chastening experience that does become easier the more you travel but is still as brutal.

People leave your life just as quickly as they entered it. This experience replayed when I spent a year in New Zealand. When the time came to say goodbye it was tough because of all the fun we’d had exploring the country. Even mundane activities such as watching TV, or buying groceries were fun which is bizarre to say but it’s true.

I don’t know whether this is because you’re living in a foreign country as opposed to at home, but even working on a construction site wasn’t that bad despite the gruelling work.

This is what’s hard to relate to those who haven’t travelled or lived in another country. What you might find boring at home, often isn’t when you’re abroad. Sipping coffee outside in the north of England doesn’t sound enticing, but suddenly it's much more enjoyable when you do the same thing in Barcelona.

Now that I’m living back in my hometown again, life has taken on a more pedestrian feel to it. Gone are the days when I’d jump in a car and travel somewhere. Now I look forward to a hot chocolate in the centre of town. Is this what happens when you get older, or am I hankering after bygone times?

Honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.

And here’s where I come to the central point of this piece. Has my life already reached its peak? Is it all downhill from here? Right now, I can’t help but feel that it is.

Maybe getting married and becoming a parent will top these experiences. Maybe it doesn’t matter and I’ll mellow out as the year's progress and acknowledge that what's in the past is done and I should look back with fondness rather than with a desire for those times to come again.

Maybe this is just what getting old entails. A wistful glance at your youthful self as you lament the slow but remorseless passage of time. An adversary no one has managed to defeat.

Making the most of your time on this glorious planet we call home is a must. Looking back on my life since I graduated from university, I can have no complaints. I’ve done so much, visited so many places and met so many great people. So why am I still restless? Why am I not content?

Is this a curse of being human? A desire for more and greater things and experiences? Our restless nature has allowed us to get to where we are today, but that same restlessness leads to so many of the problems we face today.

We may be cursed to bemoan times gone by and what could have been until we’re old and the thought of adventure has long passed and is replaced by weariness.

It sounds ridiculous to suggest I’ve reached the high point of my life in my early thirties. At worst I have half of my life remaining, at best another sixty years perhaps. Who’s to say it won’t get better from this point on?

I’ve done a lot but in some respects, I haven’t done anything. As evocative as my experiences travelling where they’re not major accomplishments. They represent places I’ve visited more than anything else. While travelling provides you with perspective on the wider world, it’s not an accomplishment in itself.

What makes travelling worthwhile is applying the lessons you’ve learnt in the places you’ve seen. As much as one can become sheltered and ignorant by staying in one place forever, you can lose all perspective and detach yourself from reality by shuffling across the planet continuously.

The angst I’m feeling could be nothing more than the itch to travel rather than the expiration of the best years of my life. This, perhaps, is the crux of many of societies ills today; a short-term outlook on life that trumps all else.

Life is a rich tapestry of moments, experiences, ups and downs. While the past year has been an undeniable low point, there’s no reason why things can get better from here on in. With age comes perspective, maybe in five years I’ll look back on this post and realise I was premature in my assessments of my life.

Life will be as different at 40 from 30, as 30 was from 20. As much as I might feel my best years are behind me, the only way to find out is to grasp the unknown and plunge headfirst into it.

Only then can I know whether I was wrong or right. Only then will I have my answer. And only by doing this will I be alive, which is the only suitable answer out of my all angst.

As long as my heart is beating, as long as I yearn to live my life to its fullest, as long as I don’t succumb to melancholy, life will go on. It’s better to approach it with optimism than to bemoan what’s already gone.

Downhill or not, life is for living and that’s what I have to do. Live for the good and bad, warts and all. Anything less is not worth contemplating.

Into the fire and out into the world regardless of whether it’s better than before or not.