A reflection on generational conditioning, emotional evolution, and why more people are choosing freedom over survival-based living.
Sometimes even our souls forget why we came down here to experience life.
Each lifetime is different from the last. We may carry things forward from past lives — things we cannot explain, things we instinctively know, or things we naturally know how to do. But every lifetime brings different lessons for each soul.
And maybe the forgetting is still part of the journey.
In this lifetime, we learn a lot about history and moments that happened during other eras. Times we were never alive for, yet somehow they still do not feel that far away. If we read about prehistoric times, yes, those periods feel distant enough that we can almost imagine them as fiction. The same goes for ancient civilizations or different species of humanity. They feel so removed from us that they almost seem unreal.
But they happened.
They happened because humanity always leaves pieces of itself behind through literature, storytelling, education, architecture, objects, and collective memory.
We are currently in the year 2026. I was born in 1983, and even while growing up — although I was never part of wartime years like World War I or World War II — those periods still felt much closer to us than prehistoric times ever could.
Most of us alive right now share some kind of lineage connection to those eras. I am a millennial, born from the baby boomer generation, who came from the traditionalist generation, who came from the war years. There is still a direct emotional and historical connection there.
We can still see pieces of those generations everywhere: buildings, homes, clothing, objects, films, photographs, traditions, and stories. We know people who knew those people. We inherited systems, survival patterns, beliefs, and emotional conditioning from every generation before us.
And with every generation, humanity carries something forward.
So what is my point in this conversation today?
Every lifetime we live is a completely different human experience.
Yes, we notice the obvious material changes — cars, architecture, fashion, technology — but something we do not talk about enough is how relationships, marriage, identity, family structures, emotional awareness, and social expectations have also evolved over time.
I think about how, in many previous timelines, lifespans were significantly shorter. In the early 1900s, the average global lifespan was around 32 years old. By the 2020s, the average global lifespan has risen to over 73 years old.
That changes everything.
There are souls who died young and possibly returned to the exact same collective timeline where those same historical events were still unfolding. Most people never had the opportunity to process life, discover who they were, or question their purpose. Many people never even had the chance to truly know themselves.
Some people found success very early in life. Others never had the opportunity at all.
Most people never truly got to live the life they wanted.
And now we are living in a timeline where, for the first time collectively, many people are experiencing self-awareness and self-actualization. We are living long enough to analyze our behaviors and ask ourselves why we do the things we do.
Are these truly our desires? Or were we conditioned into them?
We are learning to step outside of survival mode and outside of our comfort zones. We are expanding conversations. We are healing wounds, questioning generational trauma, and confronting inherited patterns we never consciously chose.
Humanity has not only evolved materially.
Our minds have evolved too.
Think about it.
If the average lifespan in the early 1900s was 32 years old, that means many people died shortly after their Saturn return. Many people lived entire lives designed almost completely by someone else’s expectations.
So we cannot fairly compare what once was to what exists now.
We cannot sit here and say, “Well, back then people had families, careers, and homes by 32,” without acknowledging the reality behind those timelines. That comparison places enormous pressure on people living today.
You are talking about generations where many men and women married for survival, status, religion, social acceptance, or family obligation. Women often had children before they even had the opportunity to ask themselves if motherhood was something they genuinely wanted.
People lived lives they were conditioned to live under the pressure of previous generations.
So maybe we need to relax a little.
Because look at the emotional and psychological toll that lifestyle had on humanity. Look at how many generations carried unresolved pain forward into their children.
If I look back at photographs of my grandparents, they looked 80 years old when in reality they were not even 50. They looked exhausted, emotionally heavy, worn down by survival. Life took an enormous physical and mental toll on humanity.
And now we are living in a completely different era.
Now we see men and women rebuilding themselves after divorce at 50 years old and looking happier, healthier, and more alive than ever before.
That alone says something about where humanity is headed.
Our souls know this because there are things we naturally know how to do without explanation. Certain people learn skills quickly, instinctively understand emotions, or feel deeply connected to things they were never taught.
But the deeper learning comes through people.
Through conversations, relationships, experiences, and connection, we begin questioning thoughts that were once handed to us as truth. We inherit beliefs, opinions, fears, and social conditioning from others, only to eventually outgrow them through lived experience.
And suddenly we realize: that thought was never truly ours to begin with.
Now think about something as profound as race, sexuality, or identity.
There was a time when generations of people were conditioned to believe that Black people were fundamentally different simply because segregation normalized that belief. There was also a time when being gay was treated like sickness or shame.
Humanity inherited fear before it inherited understanding.
And I think we are currently sitting in one of the most important timeline shifts humanity has ever experienced.
For perhaps the first time collectively, people are learning how to process their own emotions while simultaneously unlearning behaviors they inherited from generations before them.
There was once a time when people hoped their children would not resemble certain family members. Yet we still casually say things like: “They get that from their mother.” “They get that from their father.”
We acknowledge inherited physical traits, but we rarely acknowledge inherited emotional traits.
That is what humanity is actually confronting right now.
We are dismantling social pressures, inherited expectations, survival-based thinking, and emotional conditioning.
We are not fully there yet. But you can feel the shift happening.
More people are choosing themselves instead of remaining in relationships or lifestyles that make them unhappy. More women are openly questioning whether motherhood is truly something they want. More people are recognizing narcissistic behaviors, emotional manipulation, and generational trauma patterns that previous generations normalized.
It is not physical traits I worry about passing down.
It is emotional behaviors.
There was once a time when parents were ashamed to have gay children. Now we are beginning to see parents who simply want their children to feel safe being themselves.
This is not fully normalized yet. And this is still not the majority.
But social media, global communication, and exposure to different lifestyles are accelerating human awareness in ways humanity has never experienced before.
We are changing the pressure placed on young couples to “settle” simply for the sake of not being alone. More people would rather be alone than stay in relationships without genuine connection.
And like most major shifts throughout history, these changes do not happen overnight.
Wars were not created in a weekend. Rome was not built in a day.
Human consciousness also takes generations to evolve.
And I think this is the timeline we are currently living through.
If I know that I am coming back again in another lifetime, then maybe in this lifetime I want to live a little more selfishly.
I want to enjoy it.
I want freedom.
I want to make my own choices, whatever they may be. I want to live here today and maybe somewhere completely different ten years from now. I want to experience this life fully.
I wish more people felt safe enough to say: “You know what? In this lifetime, I do not think I want children. I think I want to travel more.”
Or: “In this lifetime, I do not want the career my parents expected me to have. I think I just want to do something silly that makes me happy.”
What if we stopped treating life like a checklist?
What if we stopped believing every soul came here for the exact same experience?
Maybe some souls came here to build families. Maybe others came here to create art. Maybe some came here to heal. Maybe some came here simply to experience freedom for the first time.
I do not want to spend my life rushing toward marriage, children, a mortgage, and the same routine for the next 25 years just because society told me that is what life is supposed to look like.
Maybe this lifetime is not about settling down.
Maybe this lifetime is about exploring.
About seeing the world. Trying new foods. Meeting different people. Living in different places. Changing your mind. Starting over. Doing things unconventionally.
Instead of saying: “If I am not married by 30, I will just marry my friend,”
maybe we should be saying:
“In this lifetime, I am going to relax a little more. I am going to live differently. And I am finally going to allow myself to experience life in my own way.”
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