Moving Pieces. Moving Places. Moving Peacefully.
It is easy to feel overwhelmed by uncertainty, to want to lie low with the urban tribe, or our parents, until our brains just mature on their own and somehow suddenly know the sure answers to our lives. But that’s not how the brain works. And that’s not how life works. … The twenties are, indeed, the time to get busy. It’s forward thinking for an uncertain age.
Because our twenties are the capstone of this last critical period, they are, as one neurologist said, a time of “great risk and great opportunity.” … Never again will we be so quick to learn new things. Never again will it be so easy to become the people we hope to be. The risk is that we may not act now.
The lottery question might get you thinking about what you would do if talent and money didn’t matter. But they do. The question twentysomethings need to ask themselves is what they would do with their lives if they didn’t win the lottery.
Unthought knowns are those things we know about ourselves but forget somehow. These are the dreams we have lost sight of or the truths we sense but don’t say out loud. We may be afraid of acknowledging the unthought known to other people because we are afraid of what they might think. Even more often, we fear what the unthought known will then mean for ourselves and our lives.
These are the years when it will be easiest to start the lives we want. And no matter what we do, the twenties are an inflection point—the greatest reorganization—a time when the experiences we have disproportionately influence the adult lives we will lead.