There’s No Such Thing As ‘Being Lost’ In Your 20s

Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

One of the 862,021 clichés everyone in the U.S., if not the entire English-speaking world, has picked up from an older, more seasoned figure sharing with us a sort of “life lesson.” Or maybe you’re just into poetic rhapsodies. I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure you’re familiar with that saying nonetheless.

Overall, the most inundating cliché piece of advice is life’s primary call to action. Find yourself.

When we’re in our preteen years, we’re safe. Free to fill up on Degrassi reruns (which everyone should have seen by now ever since Drake blowuptuated) and pizza lunchables with unmeltable confetti-like shreds of processed cheese. No judgment whatsoever. But down the line in our late teens, melodrama and hormones kick in and we eventually come to the conclusion that there is indeed more to life. More for us to do, see, and become. As blessed of an epiphany it is to have our light bulb catch on to soul searching, the rationale of the influencing is what makes me tilt my head to the right and squint a little.

A wizard at the end of your yellow-brick-road adolescence tells you that your spirit is a mere unfamiliar metaphor more than anything else, and it’s your responsibility to go find it.

We all have our own wizards, or voices rather, that we listen to and abide by. Be it television, your Aunt Gayle, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, or little dude from across the street, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever the influence, we’re encouraged to believe that we are lost from the moment people start insinuating everything we like that’s only appreciated by a societal minority or anything we dislike that’s praised by the masses is a phase or act of rebellion against what’s good and just. So naturally, there’s no choice but to agree that something is wrong and our true self is on a wild goose chase that must be intervened in order to become acquainted with the real us.

I want to pitch an idea, and call me crazy, but what if you don’t need to be found, because you aren’t lost to begin with? You can take as many personality tests on the back of tabloids as your heart desires, but you won’t feel like any ready-made combination of words defines you in all accuracy. Take your horoscope for example, if you’re a Cancer, you may appreciate the fact that astronomers classify you as loyal and trustworthy (#cancerclique), but all hell breaks loose when you’re referred to as overly emotional two sentences later. Why? Because who are they to call you out on your faults? They don’t know you like that.

That’s so weird, they were just totally on my side saying I’m steadfast and humble, but now I’m a bitch baby? Something isn’t right.

You are correct. The same goes for the people and things telling us we need to chase after some enchanted self that’s supposed to be our missing puzzle piece.

Think of it this way. Life is somewhat of an out of body experience until you break the fourth wall. There’s you, the body, nerves, and feels galore, then there’s the part of you that watches you and is aware of what you’re doing. The consciousness that’s deep enough to forecast the should-haves and would-haves of your choices and circumstances, but gives your body the free will to have “Why the hell did I do that?” moments. This is our omnipresent inner being. The part of us that is developed and created over time, not found.

Good or bad, right or wrong, we decide who we are.

We are capable of and meant to consciously decide who we are and who we will be based on what our experiences teach us. Not take on some pre-washed bag of personality that we find on aisle five. Good or bad, right or wrong, we decide who we are. We go through periods of feeling like we don’t know who we are, because our soul has yet to tap in and identify with the occurrences we’ve been presented with.

You are unlike anyone else. Not in the cliché “we are all special kumbaya” sort of way, I mean that logically. If you write down everything that’s ever happened to you in your life, your upbringing, resources, hardships, and victories are nothing like anyone else in this world when you compile them together. You’ll find plenty of people with a similar story, but the plot won’t be the same. That’s why what’s a success to you can be a failure to someone else and vice versa.

The universe can’t force your being to attach to what doesn’t feel right.

It has to makes way for you to develop your own greatness. We are always present, we’re just not always aware of it. We are the consciousness that watches the series of fortunate and unfortunate events called life. We’re just waiting for something to capture us enough to deem it worthy of being attached to our lives’ greatest work: ourselves.

You may stumble, you may lose your way for a while. Some of us for days, months, or even years, but you’re there.

You’re not lost. You just haven’t decided who you’re going to be yet.