Advice to My Twenty-Year-Old Self
For many of us, our twenties tend to be the toughest years of our lives. Our twenties is a time for self-discovery and growing into the people that we will become. However, this process of growing up does not come easy. In fact, it can be quite uncomfortable. It can be beneficial for young people, such as myself, to learn from our elders past experiences in order to make our own growing up process easier.
Ever since I graduated high school and came to Central Michigan University to further my education, I have endured great struggle growing up. My Mom, Pauline Burke, has helped me throughout this process by offering advice that she wishes she could tell her twenty-year-old self.
The best and most important advice that one could give their twenty-year-old self is to protect your heart at all costs. My Mom claimed that when she was young, she experienced many situations of painful heartbreak because she chose to continually open her heart to people that did not deserve it. I have fallen down this similarly self-destructive path during my twenties and she has encouraged me to be careful about who I choose to give my heart.
Another piece of advice is to respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you happy. When you keep people in your life that don’t respect you or care about you, you are only hurting yourself. By staying, you are not practicing self-love. People will treat you the way that you allow them to treat you. As hard is it may be, you must choose to walk away from anything that doesn’t make you happy because you should always put yourself first.
Happiness is a choice. Life is very short and very fragile. Tomorrow is never promised and we must choose to live every day as if it is our last in order to look back on a life well-lived. My mom told me a story about a close friend of hers that died suddenly when he was twenty-one years old. She claims that she has never met anyone in her life that lived a life as fully as he did. When I asked her why, she responded saying that he chose happiness even in the darkest times. His smile was illuminating and his kindness was infectious. He made a lasting impression on people by choosing happiness continuously.
Finally, even when things don’t seem like they are going to be okay, they always are in the end. We often endure tough times in our lives where we don’t see a light at the end of the dark tunnel ahead of us. However, if we choose to keep moving forward, then we will eventually see the light. It will be dim at first, but every step forward leads to a happier ending. Life won’t always be perfect, but it always works out the way that it should.
