I’ll preface this piece with my understanding of why marriage used to be the terminal goal. There wasn’t much to aspire to personally, professionally, or socially until industrialism, technology, and social changes started restructuring our society. So imagine my surprise when all I see on social media and all I hear from the people around me is this idea that marriage is still the ultimate goal. Not only are people still asking when are you getting married, but people are still stigmatizing the unmarried.

Everyone has a different path in life, and everybody wants different things. If marriage is your goal, by all means, carry on. There is absolutely nothing wrong with finding a partner and making that commitment at any stage in life. However, here is where the problem lies, when marriage is considered the option by which a successful life is measured. Something must be inherently wrong with you if you aren’t married by a certain age. No matter what your achievements have been thus far, marriage continues to be the gold standard by which everything else pails in comparison.

With all the challenges we face in our communities, in our countries, and on the planet, the concept of marriage as a goal seems insignificant. Of course, solving world hunger is a noble albeit impossible undertaking, but feeding the hungry in your community is not. Climate change on the world stage another noble and impossible feat on your own, but seeking out and supporting local, sustainable initiatives and environmental issues at home is a great place to start. Even on a more personal level setting educational goals and career benchmarks should be celebrated as exceptional measures of success.

Some people have already accomplished great feats in their lives by being the first generation in their families to graduate high school and go on to college. Some are the first doctors, lawyers, and business owners in their communities. There are international travelers, artists making a living on their talents, people creating lives that some have only ever dreamed of. Yet all of that gets overshadowed by not being married. On the scale of life, marriage is weighted so heavily that no matter what else you do, you are somehow unfulfilled or unfinished until you check that box.

Often when I think about life summed up, I think about what people write on headstones. Commonly you’ll see something to the tune of, Wife Mother Daughter or Great Father and Husband. It seems as though we reduce our essence in life down to the domestic roles we play. The most basic instinct we have in life as humans, other than survival, is “family making,” which at its core is survival. In a world where one can do anything, why settle for just surviving?