I Was 25 When I Sort of Found Myself

“One’s real life is so often the life that one does not lead.”
— Oscar Wilde

I say sort of because I have since discovered that finding yourself is not quite the same thing as figuring out what you’re going to do with yourself.

Especially when you suddenly have this most valuable personal asset: CONFIDENCE.

Looking back, I can safely confirm that confidence is one hell of a course that couldn’t be taught in school. It’s a series of life’s missteps until you can separate healthy self-confidence from self-importance.

I think it’s funny that I blamed many of my missteps on not having Google growing up. I would have played having two sides better and more cleanly. LOL!

There was no smartphone in my pocket telling me where to go, what to eat, who to follow, what career I should have, or whether the life I was living looked sufficiently successful.

We had to figure out a surprising number of things ourselves.

Sometimes badly.

Sometimes beautifully.

And sometimes by getting completely lost.

Looking back now, I wonder if that was one of the gifts of growing up before technology became the companion it is today: we had more opportunities to hear our own thoughts.

And perhaps that is what I want to tell someone who is 25 today…

Not what you should do with your life.

Just what I wish I had known about finding yourself—and then losing yourself, and finding yourself again.

And now?

Hmmm.

I’m not quite sure what happened next.

Maybe that’s the point.

After all those years of trying to figure things out, I think I am finally enjoying what makes me happy.

And rather ironically, I have technology to thank for some of it.

I still love reading. I still love writing on the side. I still love discovering things I know absolutely nothing about.

But today, I have these wonderful things I simply call my “techs.”

They let me discover places, ideas, people, stories and possibilities that would have cost me so much time—and sometimes so much money—to find when I was younger.

Back then, not knowing something meant searching for it.

Today, I can simply ask.

Back then, discovering something new could take days.

Today, I can wander down a rabbit hole in an afternoon.

And perhaps that is what I find most amusing about growing older.

When I was young, I thought confidence meant knowing.

Now I think perhaps confidence is being perfectly comfortable saying:

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

And then wandering off to find out.

Maybe that is what finding yourself eventually becomes.

Not knowing exactly who you are.

Not having everything figured out.