Reflections From a Decade

So long, twenties.

I started writing this while sitting in a coffee shop in NYC last week. I was in my last twenty-four hours of being a twenty-something and wanted to have all of my reflections written out before turning thirty when..

That doesn’t feel right. Why is my leg burning?

I looked down. I (foolishly) had set my coffee on the couch next to me so I didn’t have to reach so far to grab it off the coffee table in front of me. It seemed like a good idea in the moment but now I was sitting in a puddle of freshly brewed hot coffee. I didn’t even get to have more than two sips!

As I tried to clean it up with about 20 napkins from the counter I started to laugh. This was a perfect representation of my twenties — things never quite going according to plan, but plenty of opportunities to learn along the way. Today’s lesson: coffee cups go on coffee tables, not couches. (This is a lesson I’m doomed to repeat, though.)

I cleaned up the coffee and looked around. My jacket was soaked with a giant brown spot that was conveniently right over my rear. It was cold outside and this was the only jacket I had with me. Since I didn’t want to head to dinner that night looking like I couldn’t make it to the bathroom in time (I’m sorry, but the visual was just too funny to not include in here) I decided to pack up and head back to my hotel so I could clean it up. I realized that maybe my goal of trying to get a decade’s worth of reflections down in words was never meant to be met. Maybe this was the universe’s way of telling me that I needed to spend some more time reflecting — and I’m glad I did, because the days ahead brought some of these lessons into greater clarity.

My twenties packed a lot more lessons than what I’ve listed below. This is simply a selection of the lessons that have had a profound impact on my life. I also want to note that these are simply reflections and ponderings, not any sort of prescription for how someone should live their life. You may disagree with some of the points below, and that’s fine! Take what you find useful and leave the rest. In writing these as well as other reflections in the past, I’ve disagreed and debated with myself plenty of times. That’s one of the wonderful things about the experience of being human; we grow, we learn, we change. I’m sure when I look back at this list a decade from now I may have different or additional thoughts on some of these.

Nor is this a description of how I live my life every second of every day. I’m human, and sometimes I wallow in self-pity, find myself cowering in fear, or getting judgemental of others. Who doesn’t? But as I go along in life, these are a few things I try to remind myself of each day and incorporate into my life more and more. And the more I do, the more peace I find and the better life becomes.

I’m sharing these in hopes that they might be helpful to someone else out there. Whether you’re in your twenties or long past them, I hope you find something in here that helps spark reflections of your own from the last decade. I know it was helpful to me to write these down and spend time thinking deeply about each of them.

So with that, here’s a decade’s worth of reflections:

No one is coming to save you.

The root of nearly all of my problems is my reaction to life. This means that my problems are my problems. No one can solve them for me. Only I can solve them for myself by taking action to alter my perception of and reaction to life. There is something to be learned from every situation I encounter, good times and difficult times alike. My reaction to whatever circumstances I find myself in determines whether or not I’ll learn the lesson. Approaching life from a place of humility and asking what I’m supposed to learn from this never fails to offer eye-opening learnings. Approaching life from a place of ego and asking why this is happening to me often means I’m doomed to repeat the lesson and take away nothing but pain from it.

Be brutally honest with yourself.

Honesty with others is incredibly important, but before you can be honest with others you have to be honest with yourself. Be willing to dig deep on a daily basis. Get to the root causes of your emotions, especially the difficult ones. 100% of the time I find that when I’m feeling angry, resentful, etc., the other person isn’t actually the source of my problem or emotions. Rather, my reaction to life is the problem. If I haven’t reached that conclusion, it’s a sign to me that I probably haven’t dug deep enough and there is still more to uncover with regard to why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling.

As a quick example, after a conversation with a friend some time ago I found myself feeling sad and angry by something they had said. I knew there was something deeper because I knew this friend didn’t mean for it to be taken personally — it wasn’t even about me! So I took out a piece of paper and began to write out what I was feeling and why, then continued to question whatever conclusions I would come up with. As I dug deeper and deeper, I realized what I was feeling really didn’t have to do anything with my friend at all. Rather, the comment they made had brought up a deeply buried insecurity in me that I hadn’t acknowledged I had.

You can’t change something you don’t acknowledge. Brutal honesty with yourself allows you to build awareness of all the nuanced pieces that make up who you are. As you become aware of those pieces, you can begin to see what needs to be kept and what needs to be changed. I like to think of it as a garden. First I have to take inventory of what I have (what am I feeling?). Next, I have to dig deep when I spot a weed and get down to the roots (reflection/why am I feeling that?). If I don’t, it’s going to continue to grow back. And if I don’t weed my garden for an extended period of time, those weeds are going to overrun the garden and choke out the new plants I’m trying to nurture. And anyone who has gardened knows that the longer you let a weed grow, the more difficult it is to pull out. I have to weed out the resentment, anger, jealousy, and bitterness from my garden if I want the love, acceptance, kindness, and selflessness I’ve planted to bloom and grow. 

Another component of this is getting honest with yourself about where you might have been in the wrong or caused harm. There have been plenty of times when I’ve said something harsh or rude in the heat of the moment only to wish I could take it back moments later once I’ve cooled down. If I’m going to get brutally honest with myself, that calls for taking responsibility for the mistakes I’ve made, the messes I’ve caused, and owning up to that with the other person. That said, the more I tend to my garden on a daily basis, the less often that happens. The earlier I can get to the root of those emotions, the less likely I am to lash out at someone or cause a conflict.

Get your own house in order.

You have to put your own oxygen mask on first. Doing this may feel selfish, but it’s one of the most selfless things you can do. Take care of your health. Exercise. Eat well. Start going to therapy. Meditate. Keep your living space clean. Take care of your finances. I used to float from crisis to crisis. Though some of these were unavoidable (life happens), many of them were due to my own lack of taking care of myself — health issues that could’ve been avoided, financial issues that never would’ve have transpired had I taken better care of my finances and lived within my means. I was a drain on those around me and because I was so consumed with my crisis of the week, I had nothing left to give those around me. I had to start opening up about the mess in my life and asking for help. Today I do my best to keep my house in order not simply for the peace it brings, but so that I can be there for those I love when they need me.

In matters of fear, you are both the prisoner and the warden.

While reflecting on my twenties, one of the more depressing realizations I had was how much I had let fear rule my life. Somewhere in my mid-twenties fear of rejection and not being enough began to take over. I couldn’t tell you exactly what sparked it, but it was likely a combination of things that all hit around the same time and without having all the tools I have today, I found myself overwhelmed and under-equipped to deal with it. So I retreated into a cage that gave me a sense of safety. I wouldn’t have to face rejection if I didn’t put myself in a position to be rejected. I wouldn’t have to feel the pain of not being enough if I tapered my ambitions. So why ask that person on a date or tell them how I feel? Why take on that bold new project? Better to play it safe and not risk the rejection or failure.

What I found in that cage wasn’t safety. Rather, it was an erosion of my confidence, my relationships, and a pervading sense of hopelessness that got stronger with time. The cage I built to keep myself safe was actually killing me slowly.

Late in my twenties, I began to venture outside of that cage. I was the prisoner inside of it, but I was also the one who built it so I was the only one who could save me from it. I had to begin pushing back at fear. What I found was that the fear of rejection or failure was far worse than actual rejection or failure itself. In fact, rejection actually helped me begin to restore my confidence because it reminded me of how much courage I have — despite the fear, I pushed forward and tried. 

Emotions are messengers.

I hate difficult emotions. My first instinct is often to run from them. But more and more, I’m realizing that emotions are neither positive nor negative. They’re simply messengers who visit to tell me something. It’s all in my perspective.

Fear doesn’t visit to punish me. It often comes to motivate me into action — as it did in the lesson above, when the hopelessness of living in that cage became too much to bear and I finally walked out.

Joy doesn’t visit merely so I can bask in its presence. Most times it comes with a sobering reminder of the importance of staying present and continuing to pull the weeds in my garden.

I can only learn the lesson if I’m willing to be a student. I can only hear the message each emotion brings if I’m willing to invite it in when it knocks and listen. That means feeling my emotions and treating them with reverence, not running from them or taking them for granted.

Difficult times are the greatest gifts.

As I mentioned earlier, there is always something to be learned from each situation I encounter in life. Learning that lesson requires humility. I may not always enjoy the circumstances I find myself in, but if I’m willing to humble myself and approach life with an open-mind, I usually find that the darkest times offer the greatest lessons and opportunities for growth.

Several years ago, I found myself in an emotionally turbulent time. My finances were a wreck, I was dealing with some anxiety-inducing health issues, and had just lost most of my income — all in a matter of days. I didn’t sleep for almost 48 hours. I sat on my couch bouncing from extreme anxiety to self-pity. Why me? After four days, I finally reached out to a close friend.

“I know you’re not my financial advisor so I don’t expect you to help me out of this mess, but I need to talk about this because the state of my finances are a skeleton I’ve kept in the closet for too long and the shame I’m feeling about it is too extreme. I need to get it out in the open.”

I had always tried to maintain the appearance that my finances were rock solid, but that wasn’t the case. The longer I kept that facade up, the more shame it caused me. As I opened up to my friend, I started to feel the weight that was on my shoulders lighten. A problem shared is a problem cut in half. He helped me get out of my own head and start to shift my perspective toward viewing my circumstances as an opportunity to learn and grow rather than a punishment. 

As my reaction to the situation started to change, I was able to start focusing on taking action rather than crying on my couch and not sleeping — though I don’t fault myself for reacting that way at first, because I’m only human. It helped me look at the mountain ahead of me as merely a series of steps, one after another. I only needed to focus on taking the step in front me. My emotions felt like they were on a roller coaster that went on for nearly nine months during that time. But as I continued to look for the lessons more and more throughout that period, they continued to appear.

Today I looked back at that time on my life and feel a deep sense of gratitude. Many of the lessons I learned during that period are things I continue to reflect on and incorporate into my life today. And most of those lessons weren’t about finances or physical health at all — they were about selflessness, empathy, compassion, acceptance, honesty, shame, and integrity. But perhaps the greatest lesson that period taught me is that the difficult times are not punishments, they are gifts. Humility is the key that allows me to receive them.

Life is about action.

Thought this won’t come as a shock to any of my friends (or my therapist), I’m an over-thinker. Sometimes it’s out of curiosity and wonder, sometimes it’s out of fear. Either way, I have a bad habit of over-thinking just about everything. (There was a period in my life when whenever I would go through a drive-thru, I would order whatever I was looking at when the person came on the intercom to take my order because I would be paralyzed by all the possible options. Thankfully I’ve moved past that one.)

In the latter half of my twenties, I began to realize that life is about action. Thinking about doing something doesn’t equate to doing it, nor does talking about doing it. Thinking about living doesn’t equate to living. You don’t get fit by thinking about working out or talking about it. You get fit by working out. I loved to tell people about the grand plans I had, but then I would begin falling into the trap of thinking about those plans too much. Over-thinking led me down a path of immobilization. I would get so caught up in my head that I would find myself paralyzed with anxiety. What if this happens? What if I’m doing the wrong thing? What if I’m forgetting something? What if I make a mistake?

In a way, this lesson is the other side of the coin from my realization of fear. Life happens on the other side of those bars. Yes, I’ll make mistakes! I’m human. But each of those mistakes are an opportunity to learn, grow, and live.

I remember once I was struggling with figuring out how I was going to tackle a large project and was so immobilized by all the “what-if’s” in my head that I couldn’t even figure out where to start. My colleague Michael likened it to hiking a mountain — “you don’t get to the summit by looking at the summit, you get there by taking one step after the next.” I carry that analogy in my mental pocket each day and pull it out when I catch myself overthinking. To be human and experience life is a wondrous gift and I’d rather spend it experiencing the journey to the summit — perilous as it may be — than standing at the base of the mountain wondering what it looks like from the top.

Change is the only constant.

The last couple of years of my twenties introduced me to the sobering lesson that there is no such thing as security in life. Change is the only constant. That truth pervades every part of the human experience — from your relationships to your health, employment to the roof over your head. 

I’m learning it’s important to not get too attached to the way things are. Circumstances change, people change, places change. You could be financially sound one day and lose everything the next. You may enjoy a close friendship with someone right now but you don’t know who either of you are going to be in the future, so that relationship may change or fade away. Earth could be hit by a missed near-Earth object a week from now and suddenly everything you thought you knew about the way the world works has changed in an instant.

This one has hit me especially hard lately. As I reflected on my twenties and memories started to surface, some caused me to smile while others caused a sinking feeling of sadness in my stomach. I realized that there are some people and circumstances in my life that I’m still attached to even though their time has passed. I’ve been unwilling to let go of the way things used to be, unwilling to grieve the loss of something that meant so much to me. But it’s a necessary step if I’m ever going to create space for something new to grow in my life — new relationships, new memories, new experiences. Each of us only has so much energy to pour into other people and things. It takes a lot of energy to hold on to a person or a period of yourself. Being unwilling to let go is like watering a flower that’s been long dead in hopes it will come back to life while the other flowers in your garden are wilting in dehydration.

I don’t know that I’ll ever fully escape the trap of attachment. I’m human, after all, and for us humans getting attached to people, things, or circumstances is handy mental trick to soothe our minds into a sense of security, however false it may be. But increasing my awareness of it can help me to catch it sooner and bring myself back to the present. This is perhaps one of the more difficult lessons of my twenties. Maybe because it’s rather fresh or maybe because it calls for hard work, acceptance, and processing of difficult emotions. Or maybe because it’s a lesson I’m only just beginning to learn and it still has much more to teach me. 

Judge others by what they do, not what they did.

Change being the only constant applies to humans as well but it seems easy to forget that. From the atoms that make up your eyelashes to the synapses in your brain, no one person is the same from one second to the next. Each of us is in a constant state of change.

It’s easy to judge someone based on who they’ve been in the past and assume them to be the same person in this moment, but as change is the most fundamental truth of the human experience, to do so is to dehumanize them. I know I wasn’t the same person leaving my twenties as I was when I entered them. I made plenty of mistakes, learned plenty of hard lessons, and caused pain for myself and others. But as life humbled me and I began to become willing to learn, my reaction to life and the situations I encountered began to change.

No person on this planet is born perfect. Each of us makes mistakes, each of us learns hard lessons, and each of us causes pain. Judge someone by who they are today, not who they were. Judge them by what they do, not by what they did.

A close friend of mine today is someone I never thought I would be friends with. Though he denies it (and we will likely debate this the rest of our days), one of my earliest memories of him was when I was walking down the hall in middle school. He came up behind me with a couple of his friends and — BOOM — slammed me into the lockers, running off laughing. It was sixth grade which was by far the most painful year of my childhood. I was the new kid at school and had no friends. I went home and cried myself to sleep that night. The memory of how low, pathetic, and humiliated I felt in that moment was etched into my memory for years.

Years later in my mid-twenties when I was going through a difficult time of my life, we crossed paths by chance. I pretended not to see him at first but he chased me down yelling my name and asking me to wait up. We started talking and as I started to open up about what was going on in my life, he started to share about what was going on in his. We were able to relate to one another and quickly became friends. Over the years we’ve helped each other through incredibly difficult times and have shared many laughs and tears along the way. 

I sometimes wonder what my life would be like today if during that chance encounter with him I had chosen to still view him as the person who picked on me in middle school and not engage in conversation. I’ll never know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that my life would be missing a wonderful friendship that means a lot to me and all the love, lessons, and memories we’ve shared together over the years.

Maybe that’s an overly simple example. Sometimes it can be difficult to extend that grace to someone depending on the context. Regardless, the point remains that no one person is the same from one moment to the next. I’m not always great at remembering that, but I try to remind myself of it on a daily basis.

…and don’t take life too seriously.

I’m not special or unique. Neither are you. And that’s a wonderfully freeing thing. Be goofy. Be weird. Be absurd. Have fun. Explore. Be curious. Create. Learn. Don’t worry so much about what people think of you — you’re not that important (and neither are they). Don’t let anything rob you of fully experiencing what it means to be human. No one person on this planet is any more or less important than the next. This passage on the cosmic perspective from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot always helps me remember that and reset my perspective when I’m getting out of balance — whether I’m feeling low and insecure or my ego has blown out of proportion and needs deflated a bit.

I don’t claim to have any of the answers of why we’re here or what any of this means, but I do know that it’s an incredibly rare and precious gift to get to be human. Don’t take life so seriously that you forget to live during the brief moment that you’re here.  All of us are figuring it out as we go. Each new day brings life into a new context. Every human alive today is experiencing this very moment for the first time right along with you.

You will make mistakes. You will be rejected. You will experience pain and cause pain. You will face difficult times. You will face fear. Don’t let those things keep you from living. Let them be your teachers, guiding you as you go — that’s what they’re there for, so long as you approach them with humility. Don’t stand at the foot of the mountain wondering what it’s like at the top but too fearful of failure to take the first step. The only thing standing in your way is you.