43. “I am made of love and light. That is who I essentially am.
Everything else is simply a disconnect. I am not one thing that has to be transformed into another…I am love and light, and I choose whether or not I remember that, or I decide to be blocked out of fear.”
44. “When you step into a library, all the knowledge in the world is before you. When you wake up each day, all the possibility in the world is, too. You choose whether or not you just see books. You choose whether or not you just see another day.”
45. “I am always one choice away from changing everything.”
46. “If I choose not to be upset, not to spend time feeling a certain way, then I do not feel upset. If I do not feel upset, then I have not been harmed. Marcus Aurelius said something similar, but I prefer it in my own words.”
47. “There is immeasurable joy in the small things. In a great book, fresh vegetables, a warm bed, the arms of someone you love. These things, in our twisted world, are rarely valued, but in the end, they’re probably the most joy we’re going to have.”
48. “We take our lives way too seriously…in a few hundred years, most people will be completely forgotten about. That’s not depressing, that is liberating. Do what you can and make it hella good. Give love and do what you most genuinely want to. It won’t matter anyway, so make it matter now.”
49. “I do not have to be what other people see me as. I do not have to assume they know best.”
50. “You’re going to be okay. Not because I said so, but because ‘okay’
is where we all end up, even if we fuck up entirely along the way.”
(This is a Cheryl Strayed quote.)
58
YOU’RE ONLY
IN YOUR 20s
—IT’S NOT
too late to
COMPLETELY
START OVER
I know it seems like your 20s are designed for the build—a steady progression of acquiring better and more. I know it seems like the most important thing in the world is to build a picture of mind’s eye comforts—
the ways you have it “together,” the things the world would look at and approve of. The things you can think about to soothe yourself out of a panic attack. But your 20s are about unlearning, too. Stripping away lukewarm loves and work you don’t thrive doing and friends you’ve outgrown and limiting ideas you’ve been leaning on to guide you. You’re making room for your actual life to begin.
Most people stumble in their 20s because they’ve spent their lives anticipating them. They’ve lived for this point—when happiness can ensue.
But the most unhappy people are often the ones with the pretty nice apartments and the decent amount of friends and the good-enough job in fields they’re at least somewhat interested in, because they’ve spent their lives building ideas rather than learning how to feel.
Your 20s are about undoing as much as they are anything else. Choosing new. Deciding otherwise. Shedding layers that have muddied your idea of who you think you are. This is the kind of scary magic you want. The kind that leads you into the beautiful unknown. You are becoming the person you are going to be for the rest of your life. How genuinely are you going to live? How afraid are you going to be? For how many more years are you going to let your demons conquer you?
You are only in your 20s. It is not too late to start over.
In fact, I hope you start over all the time. Not by burning bridges or ditching town or closing yourself to what you have, but by no longer fearing
what you don’t. I hope you spend your free afternoons working on the skills you need to have the job you want someday. I hope you accept that you’re not supposed to look the way you did in high school, or really want the same things. I hope you ask yourself: “What do I want now?” every time it occurs to you to do so. I hope you learn that there is only one way to guide your life, and it is by consistently focusing on the next right step.
Genuinely unhappy people are never upset by their circumstances; they are upset because they have externalized their power. They put their faith in finding the right person as opposed to being able to attract and choose the right person. They put their faith in finding the right job, in the right economy, as opposed to honing their skills to the point that a company would be remiss to overlook them.
If you want to genuinely start over, clear the slate of everything you ever thought about how to get your life together. Don’t predict, project, mind-read, assume. Don’t imagine a better elevator speech. Don’t only think of what it makes sense to do. Think of what it feels right to do. Not what your impulses say, not what your laziness says, not what your fear says. Those things have probably gotten you where you are. But a layer beneath them is a more resolute voice, and it will tell you which way to go. You only have to get quiet, listen, and act.
Learn to live your life more than you’re inclined to sit around wondering about it. You can’t reflect your way into a new existence, but you can think yourself into paralysis. If you know, at your core, that you must start over, it’s not a matter of whether or not you will—it’s whether you’ll do it later, or whether you’ll do it now.
59
17 IDEAS
you’re keeping
ABOUT YOUR LIFE
that are only
HOLDING
YOU BACK
01. If you work hard enough, success is a guarantee. Most people are rarely “successful” in the way they first set out to be. Rather than work toward an end goal, work toward liking the process of getting there. Whether success is a product of chance or fate, all you can control is how much work you put in (not exactly what comes out).
02. Wanting something badly enough qualifies you to have it. Nobody ever got anything from just wanting it badly enough. You have to want it badly enough to sacrifice, and to work hard, become qualified, keep your head up through tons of rejection and doubt, and then rinse/repeat for as long as it takes.
03. You’ll be the exception to everything, so you don’t have to wear sunscreen or save money, or worry about your retirement plan or treat people respectfully, because your circumstances are just different than everyone else’s.
04. You’re a celebrity in your own mind—everyone is watching you and judging your choices. The “spotlight complex” is undoubtedly linked to social media, but regardless, nobody is thinking about you the way you are thinking about you, nor nearly as much. Nobody cares if you wear an unflattering shirt out to the pharmacy. Nobody really cares what you do with your life, so stop making choices as though they do.