Life in today’s world is fast, not just in terms of technology and fast pace routines but also in terms of attainment of maturity. We become mature before age. We do not act our age and always push ourselves to act reasonably.
In fact, a young man or a woman should be zealous and ready to take risks. But nowadays the youth wants to be careful. They want to plan things out in advance, be it trips, investment, or life in general.
Do we really require to be this careful? How much does a man/woman really understand life at the age of 27? I don’t think they know much, at least not well enough. Ideally, we should let ourselves go through life randomly till we attain the age of 30 or so.
Haven’t you heard them say – trust your instincts? But instinct isn’t an unearthly stimulus. We harness instincts from experience, that is why infants don’t have it. While it is perfectly fine to aspire to be a level-headed and responsible human being, instead of imposing such a reign on our behavior we should try and cultivate it over time.
One has to understand that one becomes responsible only after knowing the adverse consequences of being irresponsible. Like chaos precedes calm, mindlessness precedes mindfulness. The most effective way of learning is through learning from one’s own failures, for we may forget what mistakes did to someones else, but we never forget our own sufferings.
Our brain understands only reasons; you cannot dominate it with force for long. So, unless you give your brain a concrete reason for not trusting Mr. A (reasons could be because he lies or has showed maligned intentions), your brain might forget to be alert against him.
In hustled pursuit of maturity of old age, you might be losing out on the wilderness of youth.
Here are few things that you need to stop doing because trust me it is not helping your young mind’s growth in the way you think it is.
1. Stop Taking Life That Seriously
Life has just started for you. You have seen a fair amount of success and an equally fair amount of failures. You also understand that the things that you considered so important as a child do not even mean anything to you now. You are 20 something and until recently people didn’t even consider you an adult. So, what makes you presume a sudden surge of maturity in your actions?
In the end, things turn out to be just fine so, relax. When something goes wrong, do not think it is the end of the world. Your life only ends when you die, before that, whatever happens, is a disaster that too of a temporary nature. All you need to learn is disaster management.
Death is the only fatal blow from which life does not recover, everything else is repairable.
2. Don’t Stop Loving
We were born only to love, and whoever does not love is certainly misled.
You can love the wrong person and you can love the right one and then mess it up, but ultimately you will fall in alignment with your soulmate, if not in this life then another. If there is anything worth regretting, it is not trying when you could have.
Yes, break-ups are ridiculously painful but being in love is always worth it. Do not tell yourself that you cannot love again just because things screwed up real bad. And do not for god’s sake try to prove your loyalty to someone who has left your life by not engaging with others. You owe nothing to anyone other than yourself.
Start by loving yourself, go on to fall in love with nature, and then with the whole world. I am sure meanwhile you will come across a similar soul trying to seek love everywhere.
Don’t aim at falling in love with another being, because a love that is cultivated always needs to be looked after to sustain it, but a love that grows like a wild flower out of nowhere knows how to sustain itself.
Do not stop yourself from drowning fearing suffocation, because who knows you might as well figure out how to breathe underwater.
3. Do Not Settle
At this point of life, all you need to do is try on as many professions, lifestyles, habits, people etc. as you can. You can’t expect to settle things permanently in your 20s, for you will end up being bored of the same routine sooner or later. This phase in your life is supposed to be turbulent, and you need to go along the flow.
You are supposed to lose so much before you finally have the bunch of assets that will accompany you in the years that are to come. So, why fear losing when you know it is only for the good.
4. Do Not Join The Rat Race As Yet
For a luxurious life after retirement, we all are willing to join the rat race for money as soon as possible. We are working all day long, we are working through the night too. We are spending because we need to pretend to be a spendthrift because then only the world will believe that we earn enough, but we also need to save up for future so that our kids inherit a handsome social status. We are literally torn between now and later and we honestly, do not know when to stop.
We are accumulating surplus money for a future that isn’t even granted, when ideally we are just responsible for having a good life for ourselves now, wherever we are, with whatever we have.
Our future self can look after itself, our present self need not die for that cause, our kids can fend off their struggles just like we did. Nobody can make sure that others have a good life, it’s on them to do it for themselves.
5. Philosophy Can Wait
In your 20s you should be open to every idea coming from every direction. You don’t necessarily have to make any real decisions. It is okay to be opinionated but we shouldn’t make those opinions our principles that we will abide by for the rest of our lives. Give yourselves options; Explore; Take ample time because once you make a decision that will be it.
Our philosophical ideologies are a result of our perception and attitude towards life that we develop after going through so many things in life.
We base our actions and decisions on our ideology, shouldn’t it then be a well thought-out thesis? And to come up with an almost perfect way to deal with life, shouldn’t we take enough time to lay down our principles?
All of us need to understand that it is important to strike a right balance between enjoying the present and planning for future. We can’t be all engaged in the present and the leave the future on fate, obviously we need to create a strong base for our future. But what we need not forget is that no matter what future is still an imagined time which may or may not exist for us, so whenever we need to choose between now and never, we should always go for now!
Share this post with all the youngsters who are running past time and tell them that they need to relax and breathe and live while they still can.