It’s a moment when we subconsciously, and sometimes literally, place a marker on our personal timeline. Our awareness has heightened, and we’re flooded with questions and thoughts of past, present, and especially future. Who are we? What have we done? Where are we going? Are we content here? We step back, reflect, wonder, and reorganize. We are eager, we are driven, we are searching for our happiness.

Whoa, wait…we are only 25, how can we possibly have all those answers now?!

I am not saying we do, but as a recent member the of the “Quarter of a Century Club” I too have asked myself these questions and would like to place you at ease by informing you that we have learned plenty at this point; there is still a great bright light at the end of this tunnel.

To quote author Colin Grant:

“…the old adage, ‘With age comes wisdom’ is not true. With age comes the veneer of respectability and a veneer of uncomfortable truths…”

We don’t need to be 75, wrinkled and grey, with children and grand-children to have the knowledge needed to make the right choices.

So where does the wisdom come from?

It’s different for all of us, but the common denominator seems to be failure…Yep, it’s true, whether you fail fast or often or at all, one saying does seem to have validity: “We learn from our (or others’) mistakes.”

I am a product of a once poverty stricken, but still broken home, a heavy handful of heartbreaks and spirit crushing disappointments, as well as a lot of competitive drive. With that being said, it’s obvious that such a background would lend itself to a life of always wanting better and more. However, in no way do I, or should anyone, find that to be a sad fact. It’s what has made me successful so far.

I look back only to realize that in the past 25 years I have had the privilege to fail, and to watch others fail, more than most people get to in 50 years. I thought I would be raised in a loving and caring home, wrong; thought I was going to be engaged to my high school sweetheart, wrong; thought my friends would be there forever, wrong; thought making my way into Manhattan to follow my dream career would be easier or at least more normal…ha! Ya, I know, way wrong…

Yet, all this failure is not to ensure that I, or we, won’t ever succeed. On the contrary, this failure is to assure us that we have been learning in order for us to write our own, unique success stories. Therefore, as we may sit there looking up and around at the burning wreckage thinking how we failed to save Gotham — everything our families and fathers built — we can come to realize that there is no need to give up because we are simply falling to learn to pick ourselves back up.

So, who am I to say all this? I’m not Steven Jobs, nor am I Mahatma Gandhi. I have not created a product that revolutionized the way people think and feel. I have not found my center and become a preeminent leader to inspire movements through our current communities…or, at least not yet…However, I have found myself gaining great experience in some of this country’s top architecture firms. I have discovered an artistic talent which has helped me branch out to people I usually didn’t. I have learned how to forgive and, slowly but surely, how to trust and love again. I have met my best and dearest of friends, moved to Brooklyn with them, and started not one, but multiple awesome side projects together. And most recently, among other things, I have decided to make a slight shift in my career and explore other design realms.

I am a person who has stayed hungry, a person who has learned most through vulnerability and risk. I am a person who at the lowest low of life, without food and or a home, and even face to face with death, has come to understand that life is too beautiful to not continue on its journey. I am an only son, an older brother, a designer, an artist, a rule breaker, an explorer, a self-starter, a dreamer, a believer…I am a human being, and because of that I am lucky enough to make mistakes. I am a new 25 year old, and because of this I am excited for what I have to learn next, and you should be too.