“Your twenties are for discovering who you are” said nobody today but to paraphrase Chris Ryan on his podcast I heard today, that is exactly more or less what he said. However I’m not entirely sure I agree, or do, and think one way or another I may be wrong. If none of that makes any sense that is acceptable. I agree with him because that is what many people do in their twenties and I know that because that is exactly what I did. My twenties were great and I had all sorts of adventures as I explored the world, life and myself but during this period I was sure I had evolved into a new person I’m not entirely convinced how much that resembles me now. As I write this I am also jumping back and forward between being sure of what I think so really I can’t offer you coherence unfortunately.
On one hand after all that self discovery I can see in hindsight that much of it was an illusion, an idea of myself within the world I inhabited. Does that mean it was not me though, or is that the person I am when in that particular environment? At the same time while I now appear to be back in the UK in a situation I arguably grew up in, how different am I now to how I would be had I never left? In reality I know I wouldn’t be this person and I know I am very much an outsider in this world, but arguably I realise now I was in many of the other worlds I explored too. Where I disagree in that case with the initial statement is that perhaps your twenties are for exploring other sides of you before you settle back into your true self, but a self fully inspired and shaped by all those things you discovered in your twenties. I may have just contradicted myself in that one sentence. No matter what happens I can’t unexperience and unlearn things, and would never want to, so everything else risks requiring hypotheticals which are completely pointless and valueless for this. In that case exploring all the other sides I hadn’t realised existed before means I now take all of them as one and find myself in my mid-thirties having discovered who I am. The more I write the more I suspect there may be some truth in this. Mentally too, to understand this seems to take some weight off my mind. It’s funny how heavy an understanding of oneself and ones own worth can weigh us down. What a confusing flip flop back and forth self-discovery and understanding seem to be. And it ends in your twenties you say?
Observations and Misunderstandings 