Finding Purpose in Your 20s

A repost from the blog: Exploring what it means to be happy, free, confused, and lonely at the same time.

What am I doing with my life?

This is the question that has kept me up for countless nights over the last 10 years. Despite my degree, years of industry experience, and two solo trips to Thailand to ‘find myself’, my entire 20s have been haunted by the hunt for my purpose. For a long time, I convinced myself that I was the only one to feel this way. I remember a night a few months before graduating from university with my BA in Film Production spent in tears trying to reconcile with the empty future before me. At that moment I was sure I had chosen the wrong degree, and that it was too late to change my path. I thought I had wasted my life. I was 21 years old. Looking around at my peers as they graduated and entered the real world, I wondered how they had found their path so easily. And why mine seemed non-existent.

Luckily, over time and a lot of conversations with friends and peers, I’ve learnt that I’m not alone with these feelings. So many of us are struggling with the question of what we’re going to do with our lives and how we should be filling our days. Life is both wildly fleeting and magnificently precious, and the need to make the most of it is overwhelming. There’s a monumental pressure to save for the future and to live for the now as we experience, for the first time, what it means to be an adult. It’s no easy task. But, there is a way to navigate it. Now, when I picture myself fresh out of university I wish I could pull that girl into a hug and promise that everything will be okay. I can’t do that, but what I can do is share with you how I have spent the last decade exploring, learning about, and failing at finding ‘my path’. And the reality that’s emerged in its place.

Who Am I?

This is THE question. The crux of our experience of humanity and what I believe will be a lifelong quest to discover. I can’t tell you in any amount of words who you are, however, I can provide a framework to approach the question. Let me begin by setting up some context.

There is an almost inevitable crisis of self that every 20-something has or will experience. I call it ‘The Four Selves’ - the crossroads between the different versions of yourself as you enter adulthood. They are:

• The Person You Used to Be

• The Adult You Thought You Would Be

• The Adult You Actually Are

• The Adult You’re Going to Become

The child you were will always be a part of you. They lived, loved, played, learnt, and explored the World before knowing anything about it. In many ways, they were our purest selves. We might grow and change with ‘life experience’, but who we were will always play a role in who we become.

Our youth is spent preparing for adulthood. As children we dream of ‘the future’ and what we’re going to be when we grow up. As teenagers, we long for the freedom that adulthood will bring. Freedom to look and act however we want, to live in any city, and to love whoever feels right.

When we finally do enter adulthood, reality changes. We might go to a different college, have a boring job, date the wrong people, and make mistakes. So many mistakes. We’re not going to live up to the dreamt-up versions of ourselves. We can’t. Those people are not real. You have experienced so many things that you could never have planned, and the resulting adult is someone new and unexpected. And sometimes someone disappointing.

This is often where we stop and the panic enters… Who am I if I’m not the person I used to be or the person I was meant to become?

It is difficult to see in the midst of this identity crisis that you are at a crossroads. You can either force yourself forward on the old path, or, find a new direction. This is the moment you get to redefine who you are by throwing out the ‘should be’ and embracing the ‘want to be’. Ask yourself what feels wrong about your current situation, and embrace what feels right. It’s okay not to have everything figured out by 25. The sooner you allow yourself to be a ‘work-in-progress’, and not a ‘finished product’, the sooner you’re going to find out exactly who you really are.

How do I balance making the most of my 20s with investing in my future?

I have friends still in med school working towards a career in healthcare, and others who never went to college at all. There’s no right answer to this question. For me, I spent a lot of my early 20s travelling and living abroad. I backpacked through Asia, moved again and again, and prioritised the pursuit of freedom over any sense of stability. I was often told by my friends that they were jealous of my lifestyle, that they wished they were brave enough to get up and go the way I did. But I never felt brave. To me, it was the opposite. Staying home, finding a normal job and committing to the next 5 years of my life was always the scarier option. I didn’t know how to do the same thing every day and was scared to start making decisions that would change the trajectory of my life. So I didn’t. Instead, I ran away. And I don’t regret one moment of it.

The truth is that there will always be a sacrifice. Part of growing up is letting go of the infinite ‘what-ifs’ of our life, and I think this concept is what evokes such pain and fear in us. By spending years travelling abroad I missed out on time spent climbing the career ladder and saving from a stable income. What I gained was memories, experiences, and a new perspective on the World. I’m not here to tell you my way was the right one, in fact, I have come to believe that how you spend your 20s ultimately doesn’t matter so long as you do something. The challenge is not in what you did. It is in finding peace with it regardless.

Of course, there must be a balance. You cannot live only for the future or fully in the now. It is important to save and set ourselves up for the best possible life, but we equally deserve to fill our 20s with as much joy, adventure, and freedom as we can. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to life and, if you haven’t guessed already, this is not a practice of perfection. It is an exercise in self-love and acceptance. This is your first time being the age you are now. You are doing your best. You have time to change your mind and make mistakes.

There are no shortcuts to fulfilment.

There are many buzzwords when it comes to living your best life.

Purpose: The reason we exist. An underlying motivation or intention that drives the direction of our lives.

Fulfillment: The sense of complete and omnipresent satisfaction.

Happiness: A state characterised by feelings of joy and well-being.

Meaning: An understanding of the reason behind one’s existence or actions.

These are huge concepts. They rely on an iron-clad understanding of ourselves, our goals, and our priorities to be reached. Beyond that, to find this elusive ‘fulfilment’ there needs to be a fundamental understanding of the World around us: we need to know how we respond to a multitude of everchanging external factors to determine our truest beliefs. Long story short, demanding fulfilment of yourself at 25 is the equivalent of sitting an exam with no revision. Until you have done the work, sat with yourself, and truly lived, you aren’t going to find your purpose.

And maybe that’s okay.

So here’s the truth… I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I cannot tell you with certainty that the path I’m on today will be the same path I am on in 5, 10, or 20 years. But I have made my peace with that. When I look back at my 20s I am filled with pride. I made decisions from my gut, followed my heart, and listened to my brain. I did my best. And I will continue to do that for the rest of my life.

I have learnt who I am in my 20s - a strong-willed, sensitive, creative woman who is a great writer and an even better listener.

Speaking from personal experience and on behalf of every 20-something I know, this identity crisis comes for us all eventually. So why aren’t we talking about it more? Feeling lost is not failure, it’s a normal human experience. If this is something that’s been heavy on your mind, I want you to know that it’s normal. That you are not alone. And that you’re going to figure it out.

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