When did life become a checklist? 

Degree. Career. Money. Love. Marriage. House. Children. Success.  

We spend years ticking boxes, comparing timelines, and trying not to fall behind. We move towards the next milestone, believing that somewhere along the way, life will begin to feel complete.   

And sometimes it does.   

But sometimes, even when everything seems to be going according to plan, a quieter question appears:  

Is this it?  

Why does other people’s approval matter so much? How much of who we become was decided before we were old enough to choose? Why do some patterns follow us despite our best intentions? And whose idea of a good life are we living anyway?   

These are questions Shubhra Saxena has encountered in her own life too.   

In It Matters A Lot, she follows them through the different stages of a life—from the identities we inherit in childhood to the choices we make in love, ambition, and success; from what failure does to us to what happiness, loss and growing older eventually teaches us.  

This book isn’t a manual for living. Life is too complicated for that. It asks something simpler, and perhaps more difficult: to look at the life you are living and ask how much of it is actually yours.   

Because you can tick every box and still miss your own life.