22 things I wish I knew at 22
I'm being your internet big sister. Here's what I wish someone would have told me.
Life happens fast. From graduating to friendship breakups, big loves to balancing responsibilities - it’s not easy. The other day I spoke to a class of almost-grads, and I asked myself, “What did I have to learn the hard way, too late and too painful, that I wish someone would have told me?”
As always, take what helps, leave the rest. <3
22 things I wish I knew at 22
Be who you are on purpose. Don’t let the current carry you away.
You know how when you were little and playing in the ocean, splashing and diving and ducking under waves, you’d look up to find that your camp was too far away? That you’d been carried away by the current?
If you don’t pay attention, life’s current will carry you far away from where you thought you were.
Take the time to pop your head up and check if you are where you want to be, or if life has tugged you a direction you didn’t intend. Then swim back to who you say you are, and keep playing.
At a crossroads, zoom out and watch your favorite character.
Call me delusional, but sometimes it really helps to imagine yourself as a character in a story.
Imagine zooming out, watching your life as a TV show or movie, and ask yourself what would your favorite character do next. If you were going to be rooting for them, what would they do next? What would make them brave? Fun? Kind? Worth rooting for?
Then try your damndest to do it.
How other people feel about you is none of your business.
There are as many versions of you out there someone would call true as there are people who have perceived you, but all of those yous are made up.
You don’t need to know how someone feels about a person they made up in their head. That has nothing to do with you.
No one can make you act or feel a certain way.
Sometimes it’s tempting to think that someone has ruined your day. Someone did something shitty, and now you’re miserable. Or bitter. Or there’s no way you can treat them well when they’ve treated you so poorly. BUT.
What if other people couldn’t change who you say you are? What if you decide that you love your little brother by calling and being curious about him, even when he doesn’t ever ask about you? Because that’s the sort of sibling you want to be?
You can choose how you are going to act, treat someone, be, and then you can do it. No matter what someone else does or how they hurt your feelings.
It’s not being a doormat or co-dependent. If it works for you, it’s freedom.
Don’t give any love away you wouldn’t give for free.
Before I buy a coffee, text a check-in, pick up from the airport, wash the dishes, I ask myself, “If I knew this person was going to ghost me tomorrow and never answer the phone again, would I still do the thing I’m about to do? Do I give this love for free? Or do I expect them to return this investment? Would I be resentful if they took my care and left me behind?”
Some of the biggest heartbreaks of my life came when someone I poured so much into, assuming they’d return the support and care when I needed it, just… didn’t.
If you give the love while still knowing they might vanish before they ever gave it back, you’re free. You’re not beholden to how they love you. You choose how you love them.
Life is long. Bodies change.
Hating your appearance is a trick making old men money and it will suck away your life and your best years and make you bury your twenties in a lonely grave, snap out of it.
It is a game you will literally never win, and it will syphon the best of your brain, your attention, your ingenuity, your spirit, your work ethic, your commitment, your time.
SNAP OUT OF IT.
The only way out is through.
Even when it’s not fair.
Even when no one understands.
Even when it never should have happened to you.
You still have to be resilient. You still have to move your feet.
Lick your wounds, and keep going. No one can make you give up.
Whether or not you believe you can do something will often be the truth.
Have discipline over the story you tell about yourself and your place in the world, because people will listen, and they will treat you the way you tell them you deserve to be treated.
You will treat yourself the way you tell yourself you deserve to be treated.
The world will treat you the way you believe you deserve to be treated.
BE YOUR BIGGEST FAN.
You want a long list of fuck ups and failures.
Every thing I have I have because I knocked on doors. And failed. And tried.
Failure is inevitable. You literally cannot avoid it, even when you’re trying to.
If you only do things you’re good at, you’ll live such a small life, and of course it will feel horrible and pointless and like the walls are closing in. You have to be free. Let yourself fail.
Let go with grace.
My favorite Taylor Swift lyric (and I’m a poet, so claiming a favorite line is a big deal, okay?) says, “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace.”
It so hard to let things go when we need them to stay, but so often we don’t get to decide. Clinging to something, holding tighter and tighter, only hurts and suffocates.
People change at different rates, and suddenly the one you’ve grown up with, from seed to sunflower, needs new soil. Sometimes people need to tell new stories, with all new characters.
But, sometimes, the leaving can be good. The love we need can only find us when we make it room.
Things do not need to last forever to be worth it or wonderful.
Sometimes the best moments of your life are brief. Love that changes you only lasted a balmy summer weekend. People who teach you something irreplaceable were a conversation on a train. Friendships that molded you are fading now that you’ve moved away from school.
They can all still be beautiful.
The time you spent still mattered.
Being kind is more important than being the best.
As you’re entering the work force, being kind is probably not on your resumé, but it’s the best and rarest thing you can bring to any team.
When all you’ve been taught to foster is competition, it can be hard to focus on being kind. But remember, you are a real person impacting real people. real people who commute home, who bump into strangers, who decide how to treat their kid after they draw on the walls…
Kindness begets kindness. Pass it on.
Wear SPF daily.
You’re twenty-two, you still have a chance! I beg of you! Slather it!
Wear quality shoes now - you only have one set of feet.
If I see another pair of ballerina flats I’ll scream. Protect your arches. Not being able to wander as far as you like because your feet are forever changed is truly miserable. (And I’m only thirty-three.)
An open mind is the best tool in your tool belt.
Meeting people, places, things, and thoughts you don’t know well with curiosity and compassion instead of fear will always, always, be the best choice. It will open the most doors. It will leave you with a life you’re proud of.
Never stop playing. Whimsy, goddamnit! Whimsy!
This, and I truly mean it, will save your heart.
Security and safety are an illusion. You can’t hide from change — that bitch will find you anyway.
Don’t make choices with the hope you’re choosing safety. Nothing can promise you that you’ll be okay forever, that things won’t leave, that life won’t hurt.
Make choices based on kindness, on courage, on joy, on fun, on the good, on the love of others, on generosity, on curiosity.
Self trust is crucial to every single thing above, and you have to build it like a muscle.
Self-trust is not a thought exercise. It is a series of stories, choices, and behaviors that let you promise and then prove you are a person you can trust.
Once you have evidence to back up that belief, you can let go of a lot of the shit that doesn’t matter, because you know (based on the fact you do what you say you will) that you’ve got you, no matter what happens.
You can let go of trying to control everything and everyone.
Anything black and white, built on fear but fronting as bravery? Is BAD.
Binary, black and white, zero sum thinking. Us vs them. Limited slices of pie. Be good, live. Be bad, die. Some people are good, some people are bad. Some people are saved, some people will burn. Etc. Etc.
The world, this life — it’s all way more black and gray than that. You know it. Think critically. Think kindly.
And if you’re caught up in something preaching the evils of the other, either challenge and change it, or run.
The sexiest thing anyone can do is give a damn.
Don’t run yourself into the ground, but give a damn.
Choose how you can and want to impact the world, and give a damn.
Be curious. Be brave. Be willing to change.
No matter how old you get, life only asks a few unchanging tasks. Being willing to change, no matter the season, is the big one.
It’s alright if the next time you see your parents (or friends, or family) they freak out because they don’t recognize you anymore. That’s their life and their story and their reaction to their kid for them to deal with. That’s for them. Your life is for you.
Nobody saves the world, but many people save their little corner.
And what are we if not a patchwork quilt, a shining mosaic of the many people we’ve known in our many corners? What stories do we tell if not the ones we were told?
What you say? The stories you tell? They matter. You’re only in Act One. The stuff that comes next is the good stuff.
So think about who you want to be and what you want to do. Choose who you are, and prove it to yourself.
Tell a damn good story.
An endless thank you for reaffirming and reminding me to live in this truth at 33.
I’ve been living #14 since 1978.