Twenty.
After seven years of life, it’s the first age without a -teen attatched.
When you’re a little kid, and you think about the age twenty, you think about adulthood. Twenty seems so old. It seems like an age where you’ll have everything figured out, are successful, and get to do whatever you want. You think you’ll be married and making millions by twenty.
Then you get older and twenty approaches. It approaches so, so quickly and you realize twenty isn’t that old.
You also realize you have nothing figured out.
Most of the time, it feels like you’re the only one. It feels like everyone around you knows what they’re doing with their lives. They have career goals and are so confident and have their life for the next 50 years perfectly plotted out before them, almost in a step by step guide.
You begin to envy these people.
You envy the people who know what they’re doing with their future because yours is so up in the air. And you feel like a failure because you used to think by age twenty that you would be happy and successful, and even complete. But the reality is, you feel so empty and lost, and it makes you feel like you aren’t living up to society’s unrelenting expectations. It’s like everyone else is zooming past you at lightening speed, making big moves, and you’re just standing there, completely still, unsure of what move to make next; unsure of who you are or who you want to become.
But the truth is, you aren’t a failure, and you sure as hell aren’t alone.
So many of us don’t have it together yet. I would say even the vast majority of us don’t. Some of us are just better at faking it than others, better at putting on a confident I’m-a-real-life-adult façade.
But you see, maybe us, the ones who don’t have it figured out, are the lucky ones. That just means we have so much more exploring to do, so many more adventures to have. Maybe we haven’t found our soulmate, or our perfect squad of friends, or the right major, or the perfect future career. But we have time to figure this out. You have time. Everyone progresses at different speeds and that doesn’t mean those who figure it out more quickly are any better or smarter or will have more fulfilling lives.
Please stop listening to the people who tell you that you need to know what you want to do with your life. Stop letting people pressure you into making decisions you aren’t ready for. Stop letting others look down on you just because you don’t yet fit their narrow-minded definition of success.
Let your college years and your early twenties be about being reckless. Let it be about figuring yourself out. Let it be about discovering what gets you so freaking excited about life that you can’t sleep at night. Let it be about being carefree, but also about being hardworking. Just, as The Beatles sang, let it be. Don’t waste time worrying about a future that isn’t even guaranteed. Instead of feeling like a failure, like someone who isn’t put together, spend your time creating yourself. If you feel stagnant in life, move. If you’re overwhelmed, take time to relax a little bit. As cliché as it is, stop worrying and start living. You’re young. You have time. You will figure it out. And always remember:
Your current situation is not your final destination.