Your 20s are yours to discover

Being in your 20s means having to navigate the sea without a compass. Despite having blueprints being thrown around you and telling you how to build your fortress similar to them, you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. When we failed to set it up brick by brick, we would beat ourselves repeatedly once we looked at their flag soaring through the poles being mighty high. Thinking ‘How do they do it so easily?’

But then you would also meet someone who didn’t even bother to get a brick. All they do is sail their ship, a voyage if you may. Back then, we tend to hold the remnants of our failures close to us only to beat ourselves again. Thinking ‘How do they do it so lightheartedly?’

Being in your 20s means being in an endless crossroads. Whatever path you choose seems wrong. Whatever choice you make smells like an inevitable fiasco just waiting for you to make the wrong step. Your calculations were always short. Sometimes too high.

There are days when you feel stagnant even if you set yourself to continuously go with its course. When you want to take a breather as you push the boulder up the hill, the view towards you seems so far with your one step forward and three steps back.

But a one step forward is still a step forward, and those backward steps you had helped to gain your momentum as you constantly march no matter how hazy the apex is.

Maybe our 20s were meant for us to make our failures, as all other parts of our lives were. Maybe it’s meant to be spent ugly crying in front of the mirror or having a burst of confidence in the middle of the day, then overthinking as you lay in bed at night.

Maybe our 20s are meant for us to be confused about what we want. To be anxious for the future.

Maybe the reason why we continue to fail stacking up our bricks the way others have done it is because it wouldn’t work on our soil. Maybe the reason it fails is because we are meant to destroy it in the first place. To learn firsthand what’s good for us and what would not work for us.

Because at the end of the day, it is okay to still feel lost.

Your early childhood might be for the memories engraved in the minds of your parents. Your first day in school, your first packed lunch, your first words, your stuttering as you say your ABCs and 123s. But your 20s are yours alone. It is yours to discover. It is this helix period in your life when it is just you and the vastness the world offers in your hands as you receive it with your palms open. Testing its soil, its waters. Clouded with fear, yet feeling a little bit curious for the unknown.

This is your chance to know yourself better than anyone else, better than any opinion and version of yourself that you have heard from other people. Your 20s were not just any chapter but a full-blown series in your life that needs to be filled only by you.

And if there is only one thing to retain from your early childhood is to never lose your childish sense of wonder. Remember when you’re walking with your head high up in the sky? Thinking 'Why does the moon follow me on my every step?' You could still march to the unknown in that way. And if you stumble upon a rock, who cares? You can stand up still anyway at any time at your own pace, always.

Relax, you’ll figure it out.