Ten Insights I Learned In My Twenties

Well, it’s happened. As of now, I have been on this planet for a full three decades. Pretty wild. I can’t believe I used to think thirty was when you had it all figured out. Um, no, I do not. Not at all. I’ve just accumulated a larger amount of life experience.

Our twenties are interesting because it’s the era of experimentation. As young adults, this is the decade when we get a better handle on ourselves and who we are, the work we do and the hobbies we enjoy. The experiences we pursue. Some of these may be edifying, enlightening; and others can be taken too far. For me, a large part of my twenties was about the contrast between self-improvement and accepting myself for who I am.

I’m more well-rounded at thirty, certainly. I find it easier to talk to people nowadays. Travelling and pushing my boundaries strike me as genuinely exciting things to do. (In moderation, of course. Let’s not go overboard here.) In other ways, I’m not so sure that I have improved. For a long time, I’ve struggled with feeling distracted and hooked on the internet. I’m not the only one, not by a long shot. But I worry about how technology is affecting me. I’ve already quit one addiction, only to find that another one may be flourishing more than ever.

Anyway, today I want to talk about the idea that life is supposed to follow a linear trajectory. That we’re meant to hit the right goalposts at the right times, with careers and relationships and parenthood falling neatly into place. Yeah, that doesn’t happen. Our lives are subject to a vast array of factors, everything from geography and documentation to parenting styles and how far above or below the poverty line we happen to fall. There are all these narratives that form, these stories we tell about the people who made it, whatever it means. They cover up the fact that nobody has any clue what’s going on. We’re all just doing the best we can with what we have.

So without further ado, I present to you some of my biggest insights learned as a young adult; distilled knowledge freshly poured into sparkling carafes for your consumption. Read responsibly now. 

1. Having a routine helps.

I’ve been working at the same job for more than eight years now. It’s strange to me how constant my employment has been throughout the many phases of my twenties. I’ve lived in four different houses during these years, but work has always been the same. For all this time I’ve been getting up and commuting to the same place; seeing the same people; doing the same things; and then going home in the evening. My job is where I’ve made friends, gained greater confidence, and been bitten and scratched (playfully and otherwise) by various animals. It’s been consistent.

Perhaps this is something others would chafe at. But I find it comforting. I had a lot of anxiety about my future growing up, a lot of fears and worries. Looking back, I wanted a sense of structure. And now I realize that that’s exactly what my job provides: a daily routine and a sense of purpose. Don’t get me wrong, at times I’ve found work tiring and frustrating and repetitive. But it also gives me something to aim for while figuring myself out. (Also, money. That helps too.) I’m still grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given.

2. Sometimes we don’t struggle with depression; we struggle with our reality.

I worried about a lot of things growing up. I also used to overthink my worries, creating a vicious cycle of getting anxious about being anxious and depressed about being depressed.

For anyone who can relate, these feelings are justified. They are genuine reactions to the uncertainty of one’s circumstances. For all that I had a steady job in my twenties, I still had no idea where my life was going. And continuing the trend from my teenage years, I did my best to shut those feelings out. Much of my life has been this way, I feel: a series of reactions to internal and external pressures. Would I have spent so much time lost in books and video games and the internet if they didn’t represent an escape into other worlds? I wonder.

I still love books and games, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t be writing these long essays without an appreciation for the written word. But one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that these emotions which we strive to avoid come from a place of powerlessness, in which our traumas, other people, and the world itself are pushing us around no matter what we want. This is called having an external locus of control: the sense that mastery over our lives lies with outside forces. Which is somewhat true. But that way lies despair.

What matters is what we are doing about our lives. Do we play the cards we’ve been dealt or throw them aside in disgust? Are we doing things to improve our lot, or forever drowning our sorrows before they come back to life and strangle us? While our circumstances may not be our fault, they are always our responsibility. We must persevere, take risks, and push our own limits. That’s when we realize how much we can affect our own lives and develop an internal locus of control.

And a lot of the stuff we worry about doesn’t ever happen or isn’t that bad if it does. Reality, you see, is what we make it.

3. Many of the things we worry about won’t seem like such a big deal when they happen.

So here’s the thing: a bunch of milestones that I worried about growing up ended up happening without much fanfare. I still remember reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at fifteen, the same age Harry was kissing Cho Chang, and wondering when that was going to happen for me. Well, these things did happen during my twenties. My first kiss, first relationship, second relationship, etc…

In hindsight, did my stressing out help with these things? No, not at all. It only stole the joy of the present moment. Worry is a transient thing. When proven wrong, it moves on to a fresh fear instead. This is how our minds work. We evolved to run from a rustling in the bushes that might be a tiger. The people who didn’t run got eaten. But because we focus on negatives, our minds can easily go haywire and see tigers in every bush when there are, in fact, none. Sun bears, maybe. Perhaps a python here and there. But there’s no way every bush has a tiger. They wouldn’t be on the verge of extinction then.

Ahem. Worry exists for a reason; it’s there to force us to consider future possibilities and the actions we might need to take to deal with them. But it can also blow things out of proportion and paralyze us with indecision. On that note…

4. We must lean towards proactivity.

I don’t mean productivity here, not exactly. We can’t always be productive, that’s a recipe for burnout. Rest is crucial. But it’s always a good idea to be proactive.

See, I’ve figured out a simple rule for life over the years: doing things now makes your future easier. Putting them off makes the future harder. Amazing, I know. My genius knows no bounds. But seriously, this is one of the most basic life principles possible: putting in the work has benefits down the line.

As an example, let’s say I fold the laundry tonight instead of leaving it in a heap. Now my clothes will be neatly folded tomorrow. I won’t need to dig through a crumpled pile to find what I’m going to wear. That’s one less thing to worry about.

Now here’s the thing: these little choices add up to your entire life. Neglect your studies and self-improvement? That’s going to limit your potential. Can’t (or won’t) open your mind to other points of view? That’s going to stunt your perspective. Don’t put the effort into understanding your spouse’s needs? Your marriage is going to suffer. Never show up for Junior’s football games? Don’t be surprised when he resents you ten years later. Don’t save for retirement? You get the idea.

The problem is that being proactive is harder than it sounds when we don’t feel like it. Our emotions get in the way.

5. Emotional awareness is important.

So you know how to read a textbook; good for you. But how are you at reading yourself?

It’s said that a high IQ will only get you so far in life, and that EQ, your emotional intelligence, will actually take you farther. Based on hard-earned experience, I feel that this is true. Every short-sighted choice we make – to indulge, to give in to fear, to lash out in anger – is the result of letting our emotions rule us. I’ve done all of these things more than I care to admit.

It’s something we just have to accept: our emotions are what make us human. They can also hold us back.

Recognizing when you binge on social media when you’re feeling stressed, how you snap at people when you’re feeling insecure, the way you avoid a problem that seems too big to handle. It makes a difference. These are all coping mechanisms that fail to assuage the underlying cause. We have to understand ourselves and come up with better responses to our emotions. Because if not…

6. We stick with bad habits for a reason.

Let’s explore this idea further. If you call something a mistake and keep repeating it, well, deep down that ‘mistake’ must feel right to you. Clearly, it’s fulfilling (or covering up) an underlying need. So what might that be? What chemical highs are you using to get you through the day? Sugar, nicotine, alcohol, dopamine? I stay up late playing video games because I love them, of course. But also because there are nights when I don’t want to face tomorrow.

Talking about these things is difficult because everyone has different vices. The issue is one of excess: how we spend our limited time and energy, and how we react to negative emotions. The things we do when we’re hungry, angry, lonely, or tired can make or break us over time.

7. Always take into consideration the fact that you might be dead wrong.

Yep, a Terry Pratchett quote. God rest his soul. But seriously. This is perhaps the most important skill a person can have: the capacity for self-reflection.

Because the hard truth about life is that we are often the source of our own problems. Emotions rule us, remember? The ability to recognize when we’re screwing ourselves over and to change our behaviour accordingly is the basis for any form of growth. The first step to solving a problem is to recognize that the problem even exists.

A few years back I mentioned that growing up is about becoming aware of your own bullshit. And the truth is that sometimes I have been the toxic person. There are things I have said, done, or failed to do which have hurt others and made their lives worse; which have made my own life worse. Sometimes we do the wrong things. But it always feels right at the time.

This is why we need to be able to learn from these behaviours and choose better ones. I’m starting to see that it’s a lifelong process.

8. It is frighteningly easy to settle.

And here we come full circle. I said at the beginning that I appreciated having a daily routine, a sense of consistency throughout my twenties. But at what point does security become stagnation?

Because here’s the dark side of routines: it’s all too easy to get lost in them. You come home from work tired and unmotivated. You think about working on a side project or learning something new. But no, you’re exhausted. You don’t have time. Instead, you turn on Netflix, watch a movie or play a game, and let that project of yours pass you by. It can wait until tomorrow, you think.

Then tomorrow comes and goes and turns into weeks, months, years. The dream dies out, and all you have left are regrets.

A few years back, someone I respect told me that the most important advice he could give was to not stop writing. And I have stopped, at least for quite some time now. The fantasy novel hasn’t gone anywhere. I have all these ideas for articles but never make anything. Heck, it’s taken me two months just to write this post. What the hell, me.

It’s so easy to become complacent and drift through life without pursuing your full potential.

9. Everybody dies.

My mom died last year. This was my own personal tragedy of 2020. The pandemic kind of happened in the background for us. What really mattered were those last few months with her while the cancer got worse, her lungs failing, breaths growing shorter and shorter. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

It’s not like she was the first family member to die in my lifetime. My grandfather passed when I was thirteen, an uncle when I was twenty-six. But this was different. This was my mother. How to explain the world of emotion that fills me at these words? From my youngest memories back in the US to an uncertain adolescence here in Malaysia, to the man I am today. My mother was the only person who was with me through it all, the good times and the bad. And now she’s gone forever.

I’m more aware of death now, if that makes sense. We all know we’re going to die, sure. But we don’t believe it. Not deep down in our heart of hearts. Well, I guess I’m starting to believe. There was a small interaction in one of my many games, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, that stuck with me. At one point, an Imperial fleet docks into the floating city of Bujerba, a neutral city-state well aware that the Empire has swallowed much larger kingdoms. A young mother tells you that her son was amazed at all the airships. But she looked at them and felt afraid.

War and death and inevitability. The atrocities happening in places like Israel and Myanmar, the ever-present threat of COVID-19. The loss of loved ones. These things frighten me. This is the first time in my life when I can honestly say that I miss the good old days, when my mom was still alive. She had sixty-two years. If I last as long, that means that half my life is over. Such brief lives we humans live.

All we can do is move forwards.

10. Live for the moment.

Looking back on my twenties, a lot of stuff happened. I grew and changed in so many ways. Yet here I am entering my thirties, still living heartbeat to heartbeat. It’s all we ever have.

Don’t take the moments for granted.