College Doesn’t Have to Be the Best Years of Your Life

It can be just the beginning.

You don’t have to do it.

Many of your friends will exit college and enter a cubicle. They will move in with their boyfriend or girlfriend. They will get a dog. They will get a car. They will get married. And then they will start having children.

And every year they will say that next year they are going to travel or write a book or start a business or travel the country in a van.

But they won’t.

Instead, they will wake up at 35 and realize they are stuck living the suburban life without having experienced much else.

And for some people, this is the type of life they want. And that is great.

But many young people don’t realize that life, the life everyone else is living, is a choice.

Instead, you can get married at 29 (if at all). And between 22 and 29, you can go work for an NGO in South America or pursue photography or date a Spanish guy in Madrid or live as a starving artist or anything else you want to do.

Being young is the freest and most flexible and wide-open part of your life. And that affords you the ability to absorb risk. Job offer in New Mexico? Take it! Friend has a startup idea you think is interesting? Join it! Interested in being a videographer? Go for it!

Don’t rush towards the safety and mundanity of adulthood. Adulthood will come fast enough on its own. Your 20s are a special time where you can walk through any open door of opportunity you think looks mildly interesting.

Remember, you don’t have to do any of it. Marriage is a choice. And your career is a choice. And having children is a choice. Your standards of living are a choice. It’s all up to you.

So please don’t get married because all of your friends from college moved back home and you are scared to be alone. Don’t have children because that’s what people do. Don’t take a job just because your parents think it’s what is best for you. And don’t buy a bunch of shit you can’t afford just to shallowly reaffirm your own success to yourself and others.

Your life is YOUR life. Don’t forget that. You can be single forever or be DINK. You can never own a car or a house. You can live in Japan. You can do whatever the hell you want. But please realize: strollers and pumpkin patches and car payments don’t make you more of an adult. They are not markers of success or happiness.

After graduation, you have about 60 years left before it is lights out. You are a few hundred million heartbeats away from the movie of your life rolling the credits. You should feel pressure to make sure every decision you make, big or small, is your decision. Don’t waste those heartbeats living for other people.

The truth is, no one gives a shit what you are doing. Whether you are killing it working in finance or traveling with a garage band, your friends will still meet you for coffee. Your parents will still love you. Everyone is too self-absorbed with their own bullshit to worry about what you are doing. And that realization is incredibly liberating.

Fight the urge to be comfortable. Use your 20's as an opportunity to try on as many careers, lifestyles, life paths, adventures, and identities as possible.

And after all of that, if you want to settle down, you will have the peace of mind that you experienced the world and all that it has to offer. You won’t be lying awake wondering “what if?” or, worse, trying to reclaim your 20's in your 40's after your (statistically likely) divorce.

The world is a bigger place than you realize at 22-years old. The job you think is everything isn’t even close to everything. At 26, you will laugh at what your “dream life” was at 22. And that is how it should be. At 22, you know nothing about yourself, the world, love, your career or anything else that is important.

So don’t pretend like you know. Use your age as an excuse to remain agile, to take risks, to explore all the options the world has to offer you.

Worst case scenario, experiencing all the world has to offer will make that mini-van with a car seat in the back that much sweeter.

Aaron Horwath is an American expat working and living in Vietnam. He is the creator of both 12hourdifference.co and the Medium publication Letters to a Young Professional.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 325,521+ people.

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