12 Things A 20 Something Should Have
No one ever says being 20 something is an easy-peasy. It can be scary. It can be super, super weird and confusing. But it can also be — and I’m sure it must be — very exciting.
There are tons of different voices saying that by 20 something you should achieve and own various things. Especially during those family gatherings and reunions, there will always be some endless inevitable questions about your life and they are all coming from different corners of the room. In some cultures, being in the mid-20s means the time of finding a soulmate and making babies. In others, it means you should have traveled to at least 2 different continents. In most societies, a promising career and financial sustainability should have been achieved before you leave the 20s.
How crazy does it sound? A few years ago you might just celebrate an official legal age to drink or to drive. You might just have a sweet taste of graduation. All of a sudden, here you are, being expected to have all complete pieces of the puzzle in the majestic picture called life.
Sometimes we might want to have the clarity of our future, right here right now — ah, tell me about it — and we also want to have the ability to purchase a particular lifestyle. We are determined to give comfort and happiness to our parents and of course, to our own selves. We are in need of traveling the world and we are craving for public to recognize our achievements. Prioritization sounds nonsense. We want everything on the list. All of them alternately becomes the hot topic in any meet ups and they are also bombarded in social media.
Everything seems like the priority.
Just because we happened to see some posts from those we assume as the “having it all” friends, we sometimes forgot that:
1. Social media only shows the highlights of people’s life
2. We have no idea what they actually have been through and/or the sacrifices they have made
3. There’s seriously no such thing as “template” for living a life
Yet the crazy list of social expectations — that eventually internalized into our own expectations — on what we should have could be endless, there are some things that, indeed, we really should have during our 20s. And these are definitely also reminders to myself.
1. The commitment to manage our health
It is not to live as long as we can, but to be able to be in our best shape and be productive as long as we can.
A wise friend once told me that the top 3 nightmares for most parents are: if their children died before they do, if their children were unhappy with their lives, if their children were suffering from sickness. So if we want to make our parents happy, the simplest way we could do is trying to stay away from those things.
2. The time for those people we care about and care about us
We may have thousands of friends around the world. We may meet new and interesting people every single day. We might not have the time in the world to always have an ongoing conversation with all of our friends. But it’s indeed crucial to — try our best — make the time to be in touch with few people we care about the most and who care about us that much.
Remember, people would only know you care if they can feel through the actions you do.
3. The time to regularly spend time and communicate with ourselves
There is only one particular person whom you would spend the rest of your life with, and there’s no guarantee that it would be your spouse or your kids. Do you need more reasons why you better regularly spend a quality time and have a conversation with yourself?
4. The curiosity
This is the time for you to ask questions, and not to always have the answer to everything. Being in your 20 something is the perfect time for you to take the wheel to continuously get those “a-ha” moments.
You have the energy and you indeed have the time of your life. It is the best time to explore the possibilities in life, to probably explore the world if you want, to experience different things, and — most importantly — to explore yourself. It is the best time to start asking yourself “Who are you?” and take the time to discover and build the answer.
5. Understanding the roots of our fears
Knowing your ultimate fear is one thing, but understanding it is different. After acknowledging the existence of your fear and not hating yourself for having one (or two, or five), you also need to understand the reason for its existence, or in other words, understand how your fear was born.
You may have some initial fear, or fear that constructed from a bad experience in the past, or fear that built upon external perceptions. Are you deeply scared of rejection, failure, or the fear of being not good enough? Understand how it was born. It is a crucial step you need to take in order for you to finally accept it, be peace with it, and to choose courage.
6. The courage
If there’s only one thing we should experience in our 20s, it would be the thrill of start doing something we’ve been always scared doing.
Having the courage to follow your curiosity, to actually try, give it a time, and to be surprised with the result. Some say that we should have the courage to start while we are young, don’t have too many responsibilities, and when we haven’t settled. Well, I don’t disagree with that. But what if, under some circumstances, a person has been holding responsibilities since forever? I prefer saying, always have the courage to do what you’re afraid to do, wisely.
Do you want to do a solo backpacking trip? Do you want to try to have that pixie cut? Do you want to cut some deep-rooted toxic negative people around you? Do you want to start a new career? Take the step bravely only if you’re aware that every single decision would always have consequences. Have the right reasons to do so, and a full awareness that you’d be ready to face the consequences.
By the way, if there are only two things we should experience in our 20s, I would say that they would be the thrill in choosing courage and the pain in experiencing failure. That’s the only way to practically learn fast, by always making new mistakes.
7. The ability and willingness to continuously learn
There are always, always (repeat this one word for hundreds of times in your head) new things to learn.
8. The hope and perseverance
Expect things would be difficult, it would be crazily challenging and there would always be inevitable and expected unexpected circumstances that will drag you down.
Two in one element that a 20 something must always have is a combination of strong hope with even stronger perseverance. The speed of technology development offers instant processes, that to some extent gives us an illusion of how general processes in life should be. You know what else is instant? Junk foods, one-night stands, corruptions, and so on. You can make the list.
A meaningful journey with an honest process can never be instant. You would need another level of stubbornness and crazy hard work to make things work. It’s difficult, challenging, and it feels endless. Take time to enjoy the pain, because it means you’re building your muscles.
That’s how “hope” takes an important role in your journey. While working your asses off, believe that universe would conspire to help you out when you take the time to be persistent in trying to do what’s right.
A clue to make things slightly easier: surround yourselves with people who appreciates a long process of hard work. People who want an instant success have a high potential ability to stress you out.
9. The right attitude — ability to adapt and adjust
I couldn’t stress even stronger how extremely crucial this point is for 20 something individuals. For the past years, we probably have learned how to plan and to decide, only for us to learn that we should always expect the unexpected. Your adaptability in any kind of situation while keep holding on to your values would keep you moving forward, not your rigid plan.
10. A compassion and a heart to forgive
We are not grown ups if we hadn’t experienced any horrible pain in life. Pain gets even more hurtful not when it comes from enemies. It is beyond us when the betrayals come from people we trust the most.
Yet there are countless people who wish that life could be simpler and ideal (I was — and still am sometimes — part of that group), once we acknowledge and accept the reality that life is indeed uneasy and challenging, that is the moment when things seem a bit easier. Once we understand that pain is inevitable, we can finally stop asking, “why did it happen?”.
Only when we shift the driver of our feeling to the source of compassion, we’d be able to accept, and we would eventually forgive whatever that has happened in the past. Always have the heart to forgive others, most importantly, to forgive ourselves.
11. Some experiences of being completely selfless
It can be a moment when you sincerely just give and expect nothing back. It can be that short volunteer project you take after your graduation. It can be as simple as helping a stranger who is in need. Experiencing a moment of being selfless would show you how to be selfish in the right way, because — guess what — thinking that you’re doing something good for others would make you feel really really good. You would understand it once you try it. It is legit and it is known as the term helper’s high — which leads us to the next point.
12. The desire to contribute something positive through what you do
Being in your 20s, you know that you still have long winding years ahead you. If you’re lucky, you’d still have around 30–40 productive years that you can use for anything you would like to do. We better have the right reasons for choosing a direction of what we want to do in life. Seeing the fact that we are given by talents and a lot of opportunities to grow, there must be a reason why we are so blessed.
Remember how nice it feels to help someone in needs? Imagine how great it feels if you could contribute something positive through what you do during your productive years in life — especially if it can improve something you deeply care about.
We all have the chance to create some stories to tell, and this might be the perfect time to be aware what our hearts really want to contribute for.
Thank you for reading :) If you enjoyed this piece, please consider hitting that recommend heart shape thing and feel free to share and spread the ideas.
