How Life Has Changed
Liminal and Extra Rosy Observations of Early Adulthood [31]:
There is no lack of research on how the prefrontal cortex won’t reach its full potential and maturity until one reaches 25 years of age. Biologically, as a 23 year old person, I’m still growing mentally. I jested with a friend a few weeks past about how after my last birthday, the whole world views entirely shifted. I told him it genuinely felt like I was not sober the first 22 years of my life: walking through life half day-dreaming, not fully conscious.
After I turned 23, all my priorities weirdly clarified, excessive concerns about under-performing, disappointing authority figures (say parents, teachers, bosses, etc.) almost evaporated. The fear of being too much, too demanding, too quiet, too plain dwindled. I ceased to fixate on the fact that I don’t like parties, am not into drinking and might decline an invitation just to go home and be with myself if my social battery is low.
When I was in college, I spent more time training myself to appear pleasant to others than actually being useful, kind or confident. I had to speak a certain way and put on a certain facade so I can blend in the environment, whether in a networking call, a class or more absurd, a restaurant. I would be embarrassed when my mom visited me in the States and took longer at the counter to pick an ice cream flavor, asked many a questions and acted like a typical Asian mom in a packed American business - which I later realized is not demanding at all, my mom was just being honest.
It is worth discussing because as a fairly impatient person, the clarity took forever and came all at once. I was looking for my why, how and when for so long that I thought it would never come. But like most windfall, it came when I least expected. I used to dread adulthood like a plague. I thought adulthood might mean sticking to an office chair for at least 8 hours a day with other corporate fellows. I fretted that adulthood would mean I stop dreaming, writing, and being witty. I fretted that adulthood would mean waiting in long lines of traffic to get home, and have just enough energy to plop down on the couch and scroll.
Strangely, even though I still work for a corporation that is older than me, whose products I have not owned until I started working for them, my daily life couldn’t look any more different. I woke up these days in my light-filled space, where I adorn with my three plants children (a snake plant, pothos and limelight dracaena), colorful art pieces that make my heart sing and a piano keyboard that I could dabble with anytime. I don’t sit in half-hour traffic (not that I could drive anyway) or am attached to a grey cubicle. I have my life with me: I take long walks in a tree-lined neighborhood and practice yoga every day. I cook at a unusually frequent cadence (my family would testify to this). I write more than ever.
A self-devised theory on why I am undergoing this exuberance now is because in college, I was bound by whatever my college has to offer. Don’t get me wrong, my university is gigiantic. In fact, it is one of the biggest universities in America with more than 30,000 undergraduate students. There are more than 10 different colleges and resources that span beyond my wildest dreams. But a university at best is a flawed replication of the real world. If the real world has 12 colors, a university would at most offers three.
Being a student also means you are rewarded by being good in earning high grades, getting internships/research opportunities and then graduate with honors and/or a prestigious job for the school’s merits and recognition. Such system excludes other aspects of thriving a human being - the need to live with purpose, creativity, art, among others. I was in business school, so aside from the good grades expectations, we are hoped to, as 19-year-olds, build and maintain relationships with the school’s corporate sponsors and partners. The highest performing ones might have a chance to work in a pro bono consulting model the school sets up, that is so students can serve corporates even before they commit to a 50-year work life. There was little encouragement to do anything outside of the standard business student model: to devise, create and become unpredictable. If I announced at the time that I didn’t dream about working for General Mills or 3M, stares were guaranteed from peers, professors and the counselors.
As a consequence, I have developed an affinity for this newly free life, where I can live and dream in technicolor, never think about homework or exams, or endure the pressure to take extra programming classes because they might land me a better paying job. For the most part, I can learn and invest time at my own will.
As I am a constantly evolving human (may be too quickly sometimes), I am sure I might revisit this essay in a few months time and laugh at my own innocence. But for now, let’s douse in the goodness of it all.
Thank you for supporting the Life With MD newsletter. Please give this essay a heart by clicking at the top of the page and subscribe if you have not already, I put out new words every Friday.
I love you and hope you are having a sweet sweet week. Happy September. Leave me a note of how you are doing, I would love to know.