Friends

    At the outset of my high school career, college placement in hand and the horizons of a new future looming in the distance, I was a mess. Not from fear of what was to come, not even because of the anxiety tied to a big move to a new state. More so, because the words my father shared days earlier had taken root in my mind and refused to let go. Though I knew he was joking, his lightly veiled threat—If you don’t get into an Ivy League law school, I’ll jump off the 40th floor—didn’t exactly land the way he thought it would.
    Growing up, my parents were always working. Not in a concerning way—at least not most of the time—but in a way that defied the classic nine-to-five vision I once associated with adulthood. My parents, both originally from India, came from modest means, raised in homes where money was tight and choices were even tighter. My dad, the youngest of five, carved out a future for himself by sheer intellectual force, competing fiercely for scholarships and academic recognition just to stay afloat. My mom studied for her own entrance exams while tutoring others, a two-for-one hustle born out of necessity. Success, for them, wasn’t optional—it was survival. So while my dad’s comment may have come with a chuckle, it rested on a lifetime of sacrifice, struggle, and the unrelenting pursuit of upward mobility. At seventeen, standing at the starting line of my own journey, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was capable of carrying that legacy forward—or if I even wanted to.
    Over time, the pressure to fulfill their expectations—and the even more demanding ones I had internalized—fermented into something toxic. I consumed caffeine like it was water, skipped meals in favor of productivity, and treated sleep as a luxury rather than a necessity. For years, I found pride in my lifestyle, content in the limits I knew I was pushing. This is what it takes to be great, I used to tell myself. The path to success is not meant to be easy. But with the shortcomings that always come with any attempt to attain one’s ideals of perfectionism, the devastation of being anything less would never fail to wreak havoc on myself and those around me alike.
    I was so entrenched in the life I felt I should live that I never questioned who I was becoming in the process. It wasn’t until the burnout caught up with me, finally overtaking the ferocity with which I tried to outrun it, that I slowed down. I didn’t have a choice. I had to breathe. And it was only then that I realized how warped my understanding of success and growth had become. The fate I once accepted—an adulthood marked by constant grind, sleepless nights, and a fear of mediocrity—suddenly felt not just unreachable, but unbearable. For the first time, I didn’t want to keep sprinting. It was in that haze—overwhelmed, exhausted, and unsure of what was next—that I turned to something that had always been there, quietly playing in the background: reruns of Friends.

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    Until recently, I hadn’t realized that the characters in Friends are in their mid to late twenties when the show begins. That discovery floored me. The series follows Ross, Rachel, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, and Chandler as they stumble through adulthood—enduring breakups, job losses, existential spirals, and bad haircuts—all beneath the backdrop of a laugh track. I have always loved the show, but over time, I began to uncover more than comfort; I found hope. On one particular night, I landed on Season 9, The One Where Rachel Goes Back to Work. The episode follows Chandler, who, after years in statistical analysis and data reconfiguration, decides to quit his job. Everyone else, he realizes, is pursuing careers that reflect some version of their passion—except for him. He doesn’t know what his passion is. The overwhelmed tone is set right away: “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life!” he blurts. And when he turns to Monica for support, he voices a thought I’ve clung onto one too many times: “It’s all so overwhelming. I don’t know where to start.”
    When I first saw this episode—probably during my middle school binge—I didn’t relate, having imagined a crystal-clear vision for my future: graduate high school, attend a top university (preferably Ivy League), go straight to law school, and coast into a perfectly packaged adult life. Watching Chandler’s spiral back then, I was amused. Watching it now, something about it is not as funny. In many ways, I’ve achieved the things that the younger version of me set out to do. I made it to a reputable university, I got into a prestigious law school—one that elicited a simple good job from my father—and I landed a job in the legal field; I’ve checked the boxes. But even now, with the next four years of my life mapped out, I often feel like I’m standing on shifting sand, wondering whether the life I’m chasing is one I truly want—or just one I feel I should have. Since the age of eight, fresh off a game of Life where doctor and lawyer were the only winning professions, I’ve said I wanted to be a lawyer. I never looked back. Maybe because I’m scared of what I’ll find if I do. Or maybe because it’s easier to follow a path that’s already paved than to risk veering into the unknown.
    But watching Chandler begin again—step into something uncertain, armed with only a flimsy résumé and a fragile sense of hope—I started to question the psyche I had built myself around. Meghana’s words have echoed in my mind more often than I care to admit: “You don’t have to start great, you have to start to be great,” in my attempts at making sense of what it means to live a life that is mine, not just one that looks good on paper. I used to think greatness meant constant motion. Never questioning. Never straying. But now I am starting to wonder whether maybe greatness is quieter than that. Maybe it doesn’t always look like straight A’s or Ivy League acceptances or relentless ambition. Maybe greatness is choosing honesty over certainty. Maybe it’s sitting in the discomfort long enough to understand yourself.   

Maybe it’s trusting that, even when the future is unclear, you’ll find a way forward. 
    The inner doubts, those that urge the push and push, that have clung to me for years, haven’t disappeared. They still show up—whispering in moments of stillness, resurfacing when I hesitate or take an unfamiliar step. But they no longer dictate the pace of my life, I think. I’ve started to find power in pause, grace in uncertainty, and meaning in a version of success that isn’t built solely on expectations. What Friends gave me, in the end, then, wasn’t just a way to laugh through burnout. It was permission. Permission to figure things out slowly. Permission to change course. Permission to fail without believing I’m a failure. Watching these six characters fall apart and come back together—messy, confused, and deeply human—taught me that blank; That purpose isn’t something you chase down; it’s something you build, choice by choice, day by day.

    I still want to be a lawyer, I do. But now, I want to become one not to fulfill some rigid legacy or satisfy a lifelong narrative, but because I believe in the work and the person I’m becoming along the way. That distinction matters, I think. It’s what separates the version of me that ran on fear from the version that’s learning to move through love—love for my family, love for my future, and, maybe for the first time, love for myself. Ultimately, Friends never promised a perfect ending; neither will I. But it did promise that, no matter how much you feel like a mess, there’d always be someone there, holding out a cup of coffee, saying, “I’ll be there for you.” And as long as I can find safety in that, I'll be just fine .