Some Big Ideas for Your Twenties (So Far)
Dear Gup and Dabbles,
I’m about 70,000 words into the book I’m writing for you Gup (Dabbles, don’t worry, I will write a book for you next!).
The book is meant to be a sort of life guide to your twenties, focusing on the main areas that I believe are important (career, family, identity, etc).
In the process of writing the different sections, I keep discovering these meta themes about your twenties and life in general that sort of tie all the sections together, so while they’re fresh in my mind, I wanted to distill them here.
In your twenties you don’t know enough about yourself.
You also don’t know enough about the world.
The biggest trap in your twenties is thinking you do know enough about yourself and the world, and then trying to create a life around these false ideas
The way to fight this trap is to try different things in real life, and then catalog and deeply reflect on how you react to those different experiences.
Over time you’ll begin to develop a more accurate picture of who you are, and have a better understanding of how the world actually works.
Once you accept the truth about yourself and the world, you can begin to live freely.
Living freely means not trying to live a life that is in contradiction with who you are and how the world works. To live freely is to live truthfully, as you see it.
Knowing the truth does not mean living it is easy. There are many pressures life throws at you that may have you question what you know and believe.
There is no point, in which you’ll feel like you’re living 100% consistently with the truth. Life is messier than you think.
The key to a messy life is not to try to chip away at the bad parts and only leave the good parts.
The key is to love all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
There is no part of the messy life that is not just part of life.
The best “hack” to love your messy life is to find a partner and spouse who can support you and whom you can support. Messy lives are more fun if you spend it with someone you love and who loves you.
Becoming a parent will make your life even messier, but also give you more perspective. The things you think are important and unimportant will change dramatically.
This is because kids increase your capacity for love. Your heart breaks open and in a way, you become a different person, in a new reality.
It’s a process of “unselfishing,” a process of removing yourself as the center of your universe.
Unselfishing is a good indicator that your twenties (conceptually, not literally), are beginning to end.
You begin to internalize that your life is just a small part of a whole web of relationships, environments, and experiences that represent all of existence, past and present.
From this new perspective, you can look back at your twenties with gratitude, gratitude for getting you to this place in your life, even if the path felt long and winding.
Knowing that your past led you somewhere you couldn’t have predicted, you can look forward to the future without expectation, understanding that life will unfold as it wants.
If your twenties was about trying to understand life and master it, the next phase is about surrendering to it.
Gup and Dabbles, though I’m sharing these insights with you in neat bullets, you’ll only really be able to internalize them by living. When you’re adults, I hope you’ll let me keep watching, listening, and being a small part of those lives you’re building.
Love,
Dad