I am happy right now.
Today is my 21st birthday. I’m living through what most people call the best years of their life - and while I don’t want to share that sentiment (I hope they’re all good), I can see how that could be true. Legally, your level of autonomy pretty much maxes out at 21 years old. Everything is new, exciting, and you have all of your best friends to share it with for the next couple of years. Soon, however, those friends will have less and less time, fostering new jobs and new families, and you yourself will do the same. The acceptance of falling into a monotonous, comfortable job that you mindlessly do for 40 years is grotesque, but also kind of tempting. Being uncomfortable and taking risk in the moment sucks and is scary, but what’s more scary is the alternative where you do nothing but work from 20-60 and have to look back at a life wasted.
Regret
During my Senior year of high school, one of my teachers took our class out in the hall for a fun interactive activity - he would say statements, and each person would walk to one side of the wall based on if they agree or disagree. He made the last statement, “I have regret”, assuming everyone would be joined together on the agree wall, but one student was left on the disagreeing side. This was obviously strange, but when asked for a reason, he said he didn’t regret anything because every decision he made, he agreed with at the time he made it. It’s not that he wouldn’t do things differently now if he could, but he observed that there was no point in regretting something he confidently did. This sentiment has stuck with me, and now I believe that so long as I’m content with the decisions I make in the present, I have no reason to regret them later.
Regret, empirically
Lots of people double my age say that they regret what they did (or didn’t do) in their twenties. Usually the regret has to do with how much time they spent working and preparing themselves for their future. Some people say they worked too hard and missed out on what should have been the most fun years of their life, while others are drowning in debt, wishing they would have bettered themselves and made smarter moves in their twenties. The reality is that you can have both but most people don’t find a balance and end up having to make larger, more impactful sacrifices later on.
Sacrifice
The thing is, time and money are positively correlated, and time compounds the same way money does. Invest a little time when you’re young and set yourself up for a future you can coast through. Adversely, if you spend no time working towards your future when you’re young you’ll be severely disadvantaged in comparison to those that have. I don’t mean to say that you need to be working, necessarily - I mean improving yourself and your worth. I know several people working 60 hours a week, sacrificing important things, that are at a standstill in their careers because they opt to have money instead of progress. Sacrificing a little money now (if you can, of course) to better your future self will save you years of catching up.
The point of this
The original reason I wrote this post was to say that I’m happy right now. If I ever say I regret what I did in my 20’s, I want this blog to be a direct rebuttal to that. I’m working hard today for a better tomorrow, but I’m not sacrificing things that truly matter. I still spend lots of time with friends and family, travel often and spontaneously, and make room for childish things that I love doing. Maybe in the future I’ll look back and wish I would have done things differently, but the way I see it now, I’m standing against the disagree wall knowing that the actions I take today are the ones I choose today.
Tweet“I know today won’t come again, but I also know tomorrow will - It would be silly not to make some choices today that will serve me tomorrow.”
