The Pyramid of Life

Have you ever heard of the pyramid scheme? It’s a business model that recruits other people with a promise of payment if they in turn enroll more people in the scheme.

Often when I think of my life, I think of the pyramid scheme. Let me draw you a picture. I am at an orange-lit bar that stays open till 5 in the morning. I am on my sixth or seventh beer of the night scrolling through my social media with a friend and all I can see is people getting promoted or getting married or having babies or buying that lavish red dress or making that super cute reel on a vacation. In those moments of hazy brain fog from alcohol, I see with clarity how I am running behind on so many big milestones in life. I ask the group sitting with me why this classmate is getting married at 25? Because obviously, they would have freaked out if I would have asked if my life is even worth it, or is it okay if I have not achieved a single milestone in my life or why am I sad all the time? Those thoughts are just for my diary for now.

A very kind acquaintance rose to the occasion to explain how we have a certain timeline to follow, get a degree, move ahead in our careers, get married, have a baby, raise a baby, try to make more money, and see your children grow. There was also the added regulation of women having to adhere to these rules strictly because of beauty and menopause.

There it was, the greatest pyramid scheme of all time.

But here’s a fun fact about the pyramid scheme. Nobody benefits from it except the people at the top. There are just false hopes of getting rich quick schemes. After a while, there’s less and less profit and honestly, nobody adds anything to anybody’s life.

Milestone after milestone we are told it will get better, this is the only way to happiness, and the saddest part is we are fooled by the people closest to us. Not that they mean unwell, it’s just that they don’t even know they are a part of a pyramid scheme. It has been centuries in the making, people might be making one right now that would go on for decades.

I personally have tried enough pyramid schemes all my life to understand I don’t fit in any. Much like religion. I have always been at the bottom of the bottom. Though I have taken parts of some of them that have given me comfort, whilst letting go of the choices, demands, and schemes that feel like a boulder has been put on my chest and I can’t move. You can’t take up an idea if that idea makes you feel like throwing up and not getting out the bed for days. At our very core, we know we don’t belong to that pyramid, but we try and try. All of our lives. Until the end.

I bloom like a flower with joy when I read stories of or meet people who decided to break these pyramid schemes, at the top of my head I think of people who accepted their sexuality, people who walked out of toxic relationships, people who stayed unmarried, people who left a job to pursue their passion, people who save to travel, people who raised their voices for things that mattered, people who decided at least to think about that one thing that scares them the most; people who chose to live their most honest truth without hate. Now, I am not saying their life is a happy ride. It still sucks, more than you can think of, but at least it sucks the way they want it to. Which to me is a win!

I try to figure out new pyramid schemes I’m unconsciously a part of every day. I think about how they help me; if I really want to be a part of them. It sounds like the scariest thing in the world, but we do have a choice in it.

I hope you know the pyramid schemes you are part of. I hope you let them go when they begin to feel like an arrow in your heart. I hope in the end there are no pyramids at all.