Your 20's Are Like A Disney World Without the Rides

Let’s be honest:

Your 20s are a weird time. Its like going to Disney World and going on all the rides your parents said were too dangerous, only to come to the feeling of wanting to go back in time, sitting with your hands on your head, facing down hoping somewhere, somehow, someone built a time-machine and now you can go back to nap-time in Kindergarten or this is all a parallel universe and your mistakes are not even real. Unfortunately, that is not the case but we have a plus side- we move forward, not backwards. The roller-coaster ride got boring and now you are lost walking around the park, wondering if you made the right choice of even riding that roller-coaster to begin with since you vomited after getting off.  

Kind of like looking at the park and not being able to get in.  

 

After teenage years, spent in rebelling from your parents and angst over the lack of freedom that comes with living under your parents’ roof, yet, remembering how much you yelled at your parents " shouting - I wanna be 18 and move out! I can not wait until I am 21, I will do whatever I want; You finally have independence that you wished for, yeah, you have to cook your own meals, clean your apartment (not just your bedroom), and pay those bills. Yet, you are wishing you can go back to the moments where you running around the house playing hide and seek or being outside sitting on your fathers shoulder's singing your favorite song. But, life goes on and no we are here, so lets make the best of these years.

Plus, there’s the whole searching for a job, getting a job, and then existentially questioning, if said job is right for you. And on top of that, you could be plopped into a new city and met with the slightly terrifying prospect of making new friends. 

When laid out like that, your 20's sound like a fragile and tumultuous time filled with chaos and troubled thoughts. I know the pressure around you about being good at everything is constantly in your head, playing over and over like a broken record. Then, the feeling of getting older, even though we just grew up, counting every year after 21; I know myself being 24 and turning 25 this year, all I think is shit 5 years and I am thirty, age is what is a scary thought. Your biological clock may tick but your soul does not die.

I remember when we had to type the website name correctly or it would not work. The phone line would be cut off because you needed it for AOL and signing on to AIM. Cellphones took over our lives, think about the first built telephone only working on a land line, now we have phone that are computer's in pockets, a perfect digital camera and video camera, built in microphones, a bunch of WiFi everywhere and unlimited service. We usually ever wake up from your phones alarm. Lets be real, the old school alarm clocks are better, unless you have those new suave things that you have to get our bed and catch the device, which I think I would never get, super annoying probably.  Social Media is a big hit in our generation and also very exaggerated. As we check out our friends’ perfectly filtered Instagram photos, hoping to look like that or stalk their amazing job promotions on LinkedIn and thinking why not me?, your 20s seem like they should be the time of your life. Its kind of like going to the best club of your life and not being able to get in for hours, then having no money to even get a drink once you finally get in, yet sitting alone anxious with music playing waiting for someone to come around and ask you to dance, but they don't. We also do not think about how much things are on YouTube, to teach us about everything. I can take a full-class of college just from surfing the web. I believe it is truly a step in our innovation but what if we search to far in the Internet. So, make sure to find friends that you know or seen face to face; do not think you are left out because of comments. They do not make your life any better and you are not getting money for it- why feel like you are not surrounded with those crowds we had back in the day when you can just meet up by the grocery store and did not even need the phone.

"Our Internet use grew rapidly in the from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world.^[4] In the two decades since then, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year. Most traditional communications media, including telephony, radio, television, paper mail and newspapers are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites. Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries."

Maybe our generation is what is taken over by the Internet but there are truly very good things and helpful aspects you can find anything you want but, it also updated its kind of like saying the movie is better than the book, then vice-versa.

The Other Side 

At times like these, we need to remember that we see in other people what they choose to display or what they tell us; Not much more about the person is known in your matter. You only know what they post, how they present themselves. For all you know they could be a simple construction worker but in his reality an architect that is under paid. You only see what it looks like or what it may look like.

They say believe half of what you see and nothing if what you hear. And when you truly get to know others, you find out they experience the same type of insecurities and uncertainties that you do—even the ones with the "perfect" job and fun-filled photo news feed, traveling world-wide, while you are full of smiles , those moments did come where you were filled with cries of boredom inside and confusion.

Part of adulthood is understanding the importance of finding peace with your current situation. So, when one door may close right in your face, remember that a window can open with more possibility. Finding peace within yourself. I am still on my journey to really find my inner peace. I always dream about taking a month-long journey all alone, through small towns and big cities, meeting with scientific experts, spiritual leaders, and people along the side of the road, and hopefully realize some universal truths that every 20-something needs to hear, luckily, I have parents' who taught me almost everything about being young and getting older.

I believe these are the things every 20 something should hear, advice from our elders, advice from personal contact with others, and finding yourself :
 

Recover Your True Self and Understand You Are Not Alone

1. Everybody Hurts But We Have Support

Just like the early ‘90s, music was full of deep vocals and true lyrics. For example, Good Charlotte's Anthem or  Linkin Parks "Numb", music during the 90's was full of expression of the oppressed and how we hurt as we grow up. But, I find it comforting that music has helped us understand we are not alone.  But, social norms mandate that we keep these feelings to ourselves or go see a therapist. Or if we must, share the pain with only the people who are closest to us. But, I believe that with art, literature and music on our side, we can relate to those who hurt as well. In addition, experiencing joy, laughter, exhilaration, and awe, we all experience sadness, anger, shame, confusion, and guilt.
Therefore, remember we have music, books, and people of every age, all around us feel the same; You are not alone, we all hurt.

As I wrote a blog a few days ago, I was studying Confucius and his Analects and related it to finding the meaning love, yet this is a whole different topic and my other blog has different aspects.
We could all benefit from taking a page out of Buddhist traditions, which includes dukkha (or suffering) as a central concept. The Buddhist approach acknowledges that by its very nature, life is difficult, flawed, and imperfect. Suffering is a natural part of life, and can only be eradicated in a lifelong journey toward enlightenment. Emotions are natural and modern science also recognizes that negative emotions are a necessary part of life, and part of their role is to grab our attention and alert us of potential dangers. Just like you, everybody hurts sometimes—even the people who seem the most outgoing, optimistic, post the most pictures, and smile in every single selfie, taking pictures of food yet not eating it. Now think about it, are they really having fun?

2. Everybody’s Confused and Full of Guilt Trips

Life is made of endless choices, and you don't get the chance to live the alternative, so it's near impossible to truly tell whether you’ve made the right decisions. This uncertainty leads to a natural sense of confusion and to a lack of confidence. Yet surprisingly, when you ask others for advice (like which car to buy or how to shed those few extra pounds), they often sound confident and advocate that you follow the same decisions they’ve made.

"After a decision is made, you adjust your views and even your memory of the facts to support those choices."

The reason they seem so certain, is simple: Life’s decisions are perplexing before you make them, but once you decide, you want to feel good about them. After a decision is made, you adjust your views and how you remember a certain memory of the facts to support your choices. If you feel that the outcome was good, you praise yourself for making it. And if it turns out bad, you blame it on others or on circumstance. Looking back at all the decisions I have made, I usually blame others before I would blame myself. On the outside, I seemed confident about these decisions, but this is actually the most confusing time of my life. Just like suffering, confusion is a natural part of life—as is the tendency to cover it up!

3. Everybody Has Regret and Wants to be Happy

People stick with their decisions and rarely regret making them. But they do regret indecision and inaction, research shows. Time is what truly matters. (You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take!) As we muddle through our days, the quest for happiness looms large. In the U.S., citizens are granted three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The kingdom of Bhutan created a national index to measure happiness. But what if searching for happiness actually prevents us from finding it? There’s reason to believe that the quest for happiness might be a recipe for misery.
Happiness is an individual state, so when we look for it, it’s only natural to focus on ourselves. Yet a wealth of evidence consistently shows that self-focused attention undermines happiness and causes depression. In one study, colleagues demonstrated that the greater the value people placed on happiness, the more lonely they felt every day for the next two weeks. In another experiment, they randomly assigned people to value happiness, and found that it backfired: These people reported feeling lonelier and also had a progesterone drop in their saliva, a hormonal response linked to loneliness. As one changed jobs and countries alone, he left behind the people who made him happy.

4. Everybody Feels Isolated and Abnormal

Even as we seem more interconnected (with our smartphones tethered to us at all times), there’s a growing epidemic of social isolation. As more people move to cities, the sense of community that was once present in small towns gets lost. At the same time, we interact less with others at work—at least when it comes to face time. And that’s if you even work in an office. Many people—from writers to tech support professionals—work from coffee shops or their home. Now, it almost seems as if we have no human interaction but more interaction on Instagram, Facebook and Linkdin.

 

Outside of business world, personal relationships from friendships to dating have also moved online, resulting in fewer casual social interactions in the real world. Even before the advent of social networks, the Internet was known to cause social isolation. Today, when so much social interaction among young adults is done digitally, the negative impact of the Internet is far greater, especially for younger generations. With all of these factors, how could you not feel lonely and isolated?

There's Always A Bright Side

By virtue of being human, you will experience suffering, confusion, remorse, and loneliness over your lifetime. This is normal and do not let anyone tell you otherwise. The really good news is you determine your destiny. You can easily shift the scale in your favor, if you choose to ignore all of the things that are considered as social norms or rites of passage and instead remain loyal to whatever it is that is meaningful to you. Finding inner self is crucial part of being 20 something.

Stop chasing the things you think are the norm for 20-somethings and start achieving the dreams that are actually meaningful to you.

Make it a resolution to go on the ride of your life, whether that be in a book in Barnes and Noble, within a painting in the Museum of Modern Art or taking a long drive cross country, or riding your bike around the block, just to clear your mind. Go on the Euro-Trip you always wanted to go on and drink the cheap wine while sitting on a simple boardwalk. The number one mistake we make is not making sure that YOU are content with you, do not define yourself by the decisions you have made, what other's may say or how people view you but start moving forward with finding who you are. Our body has a timeline but our soul does not. Live by trying to be content with who you are and your decisions will not matter, its about you and how you made the decision, not the outcome. Stop wishing to go back in time and make time count, it's the only thing we can not beat. Time. It  does not matter how old we look but what is inside.


WANDERLUST
Be Your Inner Self
Be Happy With You 
Stay Young, Wild and Free
Most of All, Take Advantage of Being 20 Something 
Some people are sitting there with their head down wishing for a time-machine to be 20.
Remember That.