29

Prashant Fonseka
Nov 2 · 10 min read

People say that people never change, but I feel like all I’ve been doing is changing. In celebration of my successful completion of twenty-nine circles around the sun, I reflect on a 28th year marked by action, awareness, and acceptance.

Action

It turns out action is as simple doing. In this reflection a mere year ago, I noted that at 27 my life was at a stasis. I felt stuck, like a RWD sports car on summer tires in the snow. All I had felt I had done at 27 was I bought, for the fifth year in a row, yet another fancy and completely unnecessary car. That’s the one thing I didn’t do at 28.

As complex as it can feel to take action, the reality always boils down to some version of, “you just have to do it.” At 28 I managed to clear enough blocks to take some important steps.

Most notably I moved to New York and most visibly I dyed my hair blonde. Both of those changes were at the surface; on the outside. I changed my context and appearance. Both are two-way doors: actions I can easily reverse. More significant are my starts on what I hope to be the most enduring changes.

Moving was an action that has been catalyst for more action. Like the car stuck in snow, it gets easier to move the faster you’re going. Moving from San Francisco to New York was a reset and opportunity for action.

Spend enough time anywhere and you settle into a routine of mind and body. The action potential for the new diminishes as your energy settles into keeping the rhythm. My move threw that all into disarray, for the better.

Somehow amidst the chaos of going on thumbtack to find cleaners and junk removers, it felt easy to slide over to the section on music and hire a singing a teacher. Having a new city begged for a new look, so I went blonde. I had an opportunity to design my life around a new set of priorities.

In San Francisco I lived closed to my office. In New York I don’t even have an office. I chose to live in the most dynamic and interesting place optimizing for lifestyle. I needed to be close to an Equinox to marry my fancy with fit. I needed to be downtown to be around the fun. That was when I moved. I don’t know how I’ll feel even in the near future, but right now I have the reigns.

I was a bit sad that some of my closer friends had left New York right before a good there, but that proved to be for the best in many ways. I had not a complete, but a partial cold start friend problem which forced me to go out and meet people I would have never otherwise met. I hope to maintain the spirit of connecting with new and interesting people for as long as I live.

I took the actions needed to get my life on track at 28. I know feel like I’m moving in the right direction. The metamorphoses that begin a couple years ago has not stalled.

My fear is that these are only starts. Two-way doors are easy to enter but one-way doors make us formidable. It has always been easier for me to start than to finish. You need to start in order to finish, but that’s not enough. I give myself credit where credit’s due for getting things going but only within the context of understanding that harder and more crucial times are ahead.

Awareness

I never expected to be particularly spiritual but I am leaning that way. Concepts that once seemed absurd to me now seem truer than the others.

I have come to see stories and symbols as the human primitives. I tend towards trying to find the most accurate models representing the world, gauging accuracy as the predictive power of that model. My models have been good but limited.

The world and large scale human systems have felt easy to understand for the last few years. Yet, despite an ability to predict the general course of people more accurately than others, I felt lacking in meaningful human connection. I wasn’t understand people in a way that mattered.

Thinking about everyone, including myself, in terms of their stories has proven the be the most effective model yet for predicting what people do. I have observed that people tend not to act in accordance with they say, but do tend to act in accordance in what they believe. I found that the best way to understand what people believe is to tease out their stories of self, others, and the world/cosmos. Moreover, I realized these stories, once understood, are malleable.

If stories underlie our beliefs which underlie our actions, and stories themselves can be changed, then we can be changed. There is never any perfect right for anyone because to find the perfect right you must assume the person is fixed, but they’re not. You change the person and you change the perfect. You change the story and you change the ideal.

This realization was empowering but also overwhelming. I have taken control of my life story and I intend to stay in charge. Becoming aware of my stories has helped let go of them.

During my trip to Sri Lanka, I let go of the story that I needed to retrace my roots there. When I was there I was looking for something that fit into my story of life. I realized what I was looking for wasn’t there, and probably never will be. I am rewriting that story to put the Sri Lankan part of my identity in my past so it need not burden my future.

I also appreciate that I can influence the stories of others. I’m not ready do that yet, though. Realizing that there is so little firmness in stories, my own and those of others alike, I have taken to finding tangibility elsewhere.

If thinking of people in terms of stories has allowed me to understand them, feeling people’s energy is what has allowed me to connect with them. It took me a while to get the whole Venice thing. I thought crystals were silly and meditation wasn’t for me. But I have now come to see those objects and practices as powerful symbols and metaphors; stories representing what now feels most tangible: human energy.

Energy seems like a frou frou concept but is really just the exchange of human emotion and feeling. We share this with a great extent with animals like dogs. In some ways it’s easier to practice reading energy with dogs because they don’t speak any words to distract you and have emotional models that have evolved to mirror ours closely. My crazy prediction is that AI will be able to perfectly replicate humans and dogs at the same moment, as understanding our deep emotional needs is far more difficult to represent in machines than our mastery of orderly symbolic manipulation, aka logic and reason.

I am far from woke, but heading down a path which has led to much of what mattered before no longer mattering. Or, maybe it would be more accurate to say that much of what mattered before need not matter. Looking forward, I know that I have some agency in deciding what stories to believe. I suspect the most satisfying stories will be like the BareMetal of humans: simple and blissful; raw.

Acceptance

This year had its downs. The last few weeks have been a test of sorts. The idea; the story of turning 29 wore on me as the day approached. I know that age is just a number. I understand that I have this story of what age represents and that it’s malleable and that I can believe anything. I can believe that I’ve stopped aging and that all of my dreams can be changed at any time. Or maybe I can adjust my dreams to idealize state of being so that I have already completely succeeded. Or maybe I really live forever and pause aging to be eternally 29, which is clearly in that category of ages that one would settle on being forever if they had to choice to pick one. I’m in charge, dammit.

Yet it doesn’t always feel that way. We can change our stories but the ones we have had will always fight back. Those stories perpetuate themselves. To change them, we need to fight them. But we don’t always need to fight. More often, better than fighting is accepting, particularly with regards to our rawest and most primal feelings.

In the past I have tried to suppress strong feelings, mostly the bad but also the good. I use the word try because I feel like it’s almost impossible. Suppressing becomes compressing which eventually to explosions.

It’s a relatively easy sell to get people to lean into and accept the good feelings like pleasure, love, and intimacy. I recently watched Wild Wild Country and Osho clearly understood this. What is harder is to accept and lean into the bad.

I am only really speaking from a single experience, but it was resonant. I was sad about something and wanted to repress it and forget it. In researching the matter most psychologists agree with the notion of avoidance. They won’t call it repression because that word has a negative connotation, but that’s really what it is. I was fortunate that a trusted advisor went against the grain and told me to do the opposite.

Accepting hard feelings and, ultimately, ones own responsibility for them, can be extremely painful and difficult. Leaning into moments of rejection, embarrassment, and shame hurts much more than avoiding them in the short term. But after a while, the negative feelings fade. Acceptance heals fully in a way that avoidance cannot.

Going forward, I must remember the biggest lesson of 28: be kind to yourself. I’m speaking to myself here. Ultimately, everything is fine. Everything is perfect. When up against a wall, take a step back and accept yourself. Accept who are you and where you are what you’re and what you were and who you will be. Lean in. Accept.

Looking Ahead

I am both excited for and afraid of 29. At 29, everything feels simpler and more complicated at the same time. I have entered the final throes of what can generally considered one’s youth. On this day, November 2nd, 2019, I am officially in the final lap of my 20s. Hello 29.

Age is a symbol and there is a powerful story surrounding the 20s and 29 is the culmination of that story. My maternal grandmother claimed she was turning 29 every year until the end of the her life. It’s clear why.

There is an even bigger story about entering one’s 30s and 29 feels like 30 in the way that $99.99 feels like 100; it basically is. It’s strange to think that I’m finally at that critical juncture; the age at which my grandmother chose to stop aging. To her credit, she will be 29 for eternity.

I am hoping that by the time I actually reach 30 that I will have convinced myself that the 30s and are the new 20s and that all of my best years are ahead. To an extent, I already believe that somewhat.

In my early 20s I was ahead. I graduated from college a bit young and could have graduated even younger. I am at 99.9% in so many ways that I must appreciate. I was certainly ahead in career and material. But now all the sudden I feel like I’m behind.

I am so early in my study of playing and composing music which I’ve recently realized is a real life passion. This feels something I should have started in my teens at the latest. But here I am.

I have a yearning for school and structured learning. I want to debate and argue again; a fire I lost as an undergraduate. These inklings would have been well timed at 25. Not so well timed at 29. But also not so bad.

At 29, I feel like I can do anything but not everything. But I don’t need to do everything to feel full.

The jury is still on whether Kim Kardashian lied. You can’t literally have it all, but you can certainly feel like you do. I’m not yet ready to define all, or even whether one should want to feel like having it all, but I do have some sense of direction for 29 year old me.

However I make it happen, this will be the best year of my 20s. My final lap will be the best. In running races I have the habit of saving up my energy and sprinting at the end. People say you shouldn’t do that, but that’s what I’ve done. I’m in the final stretch; the last mile. It’s time for me to put my foot on the gas and give it all I’ve got so as to make the best of fortunate period of my life, living in New York while having few obligations outside a fun and flexible job. I give myself three charges:

My first charge of 29 is to push the boundaries and do what’s uncomfortable. Muscles need to tear a little to grow. The mind is this was as well, maybe more so.

My second charge of 29 is to make it about people. I need to get out of my head and into my body. I need ditch the stories and follow the energy to find my people for love and play.

My third charge of 29 is to commit. I am ready to say no to some so that I can say yes to others. I need to go through a one-way door by taking an action that will be hard to reverse. My metamorphoses will not complete until I shed the cocoon.

29 years young. selfie // my artwork in the background
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