If I Were 22: How to Grow Up in Five Easy Steps

This post is part of a series in which Influencers share lessons from their youth. Read all the stories here.

I have no idea what I will be but I know what I want to be.

I’m daydreaming again of being a mad scientist. I’m sure in this moment that I can invent my way out of the past. Ideas that will form my own general theory of relativity glimmer at the edge of my vision. There — so obvious — wait — gone. My patron saints at the moment — Asimov

of psychohistory, Edison of perspiration, Albert riding a speeding train of light, Heinlein in a strange land, Whim in Berlin watching angels, Gilliam of the Brazilian tragicomedy, and Gabriel playing games without frontiers. Earth to Mickey, your train is coming. Get up. What are you going to do with your life?

I’m 18 years old. I graduated from high school last June and have to tell my mom that I will be the first of her children to walk away from our college bound family expectations.

Sitting on the porch swing her eyes on me as I look anywhere but at her face.

I almost play it off as a joke, not believing myself what is pouring out of my mouth, my brain having left for parts unknown, the dappled sunlight washing over us as her eyes began to dim.

Look at my hands. Look at the chain holding the swing. Listen to the creak. Watch the kids across the street hide in wait for their friends behind the cars, water balloons pregnant and ready to burst.

Is this the way I fall off a cliff? My own tendencies toward self sabotage goading me closer to the edge. My overactive dreams torn loose from reality as the howling winds of the future slam the screen door, insistently begging to get inside and pry each of my fingers away from the only mooring line I have left. My mom who has never doubted that I had greatness inside, who would always hold me even when I “forgot” to call or come home.

Out with it, “I’m not going to college, I don’t even know what I’d study, I barely got through English class without being thrown on the street. There are no degrees in Mad Science or invention and the guidance counselor gave me a sad look when I even tried to broach the subject. I’ll never be able to graduate if the last semester of high school is any guide.”

I keep rolling hoping that my high-speed babble will somehow soften her resolve. Wear her down. Show that I have thought things through. “I’m leaving Chicago, I’m going to drive south tomorrow and live the rest of my life there. I’ll stay with my childhood friend. Yes, Aaron. He and his dad have something called a video post-production house. There are these new things called music videos that will change the world if Sting and Duran Duran are any guide.”

I wait as all this sinks in — swaying back and forth — she reaches out to hold my hand. I’m not sure what I expect, but I hope she’ll talk me out of this madness. Yell at me — gnash her teeth—explain to me why I can’t. Shouldn’t. Won’t go. Tell me she will not have it.

She watches the kids ambush their friend. Stares at the setting sun, looks me in the eyes. The swing creaks. The light in her eyes blinks back into view, a bit of a devilish smile turns her lips, she’s figured out exactly what this is, how to play this. She’s getting ready to channel our fiery grandmother and burn my crazy dreams to the ground.

“Well friend, you know we’ll be here if you need us.”

Then she wraps me in her arms and squeezes me tight. “We love you,” she whispers as she crushes the air from my lungs. I am safe for one last moment and just like that I take my first step through a hole in the universe.

Step 1: If you love something set it free

Six months later and far worse, and better for the adventure I’m back in Chicago getting applications in to go to college. I had met a princess and a pea from a foreign land—learned how to baby forty thousand dollar video cameras—spent a night waiting for the sun to rise over a cemetery—cameras rolling while fog wrapped confederate ghosts marched in sync with yet another hopeful band’s anthem for a generation—I had found myself selling broken drum sticks

thrown casually off fevered performances by one Stuart Copeland while playing temporary roadie for the Police.

While that sounds like a young person’s dream, the entire time I was away I was secretly yearning for school, and home, and my future. I wanted to dig deep into books, talk about the hard problems of the universe with other people grappling with the big questions of our times, and see if I could really be a mad, or at least slightly eccentric scientist.

Someone I met on my adventures told me that life was like a sculpture hidden in a block of marble waiting to get out. He said, “Everything you try cuts a little away and reveals a bit more of the shape that your life could become. Even if this isn’t the life for you, now you know. Keep wandering and cultivate a wide ranging curiosity. You’ll be fine.”

In keeping with that advice I’m back in school by the beginning of the year. My mom knew that her investment in nearly two decades on a life—where reading was a joy, science was a way of getting closer to a greater purpose and the pure wonder and shock of the new was a drug—would set me on my way.

I’m taking every class that scares me and every one that I think I’ll need to become a scientist. Let the chipping away at my future begin. I’ve filled my schedule with conversational Japanese because I’m afraid of being able to pass my language requirement and love the look and feel of hiragana and katakana. I’m taking voice training because I think I’m tone deaf, I’m learning assembly language programming and organic chemistry. I have decided I will start as a physicist, they seem mad or at least unkempt, and my older brother did it, so it can’t be that hard, right? Worst case I end up cutting a bit more of that stone away to reveal what I should really do and learn to respect my brother a little more. There is a freedom I never felt before, because I can’t really do anything wrong as long as I try, as long as I keep moving.

Step 2: Do the impossible first and then the rest will be a little easier

A year later as a complete lark I take acting and drawing to escape from trying to figure out any more about spooky action at a distance.

The universe opens and I step through again.

While taking a class where the final exam is reported to be something called a critique, a fellow student takes interest in my drawings and asks if I’m an industrial designer. I gape. I don’t even know what that is.

“Are you a communication designer?”

Mmmmmmmmmmm…

“An architect?”

Ah, yes I know what that is at least. No.

“Well you seem like an industrial designer to me. Come on,” she smiles, “I’ll take you over to the school of Art and Architecture and show you what I mean…”

I’m almost catatonic. I don’t quite know what to say. First, because she has stolen my breath away and I am having a very hard time breathing. Second, because she is one of the ones I’ve been watching all semester who has made me glad to have taken the class, if only to be close to someone as creative and different and passionate about her journey as I dream about being about mine. Third, because did I mention that she’s actually talking to me, and has already decided what my true calling is and her attention has kicked me in the teeth and left me gob smacked and drooling a bit?

She drags me across the road to the epicenter of design. I see people designing motorcycles and monorails, typefaces, posters, buildings, prosthetic limbs, clothing, and furniture. “This is design,” she says.

A year later I am on the path to becoming a designer. I’ve changed majors, turns out my brother is smarter. His brain is shaped differently than mine. Physics for him is a walk in the park and for me it is Everest. I've thrown my heart and soul into the idea that you can systematically attempt to change the future by design. I’m learning that it is a different discipline than engineering, or art or science. That it’s about subverting self, taking on someone else’s agenda, and doing something that neither of you could have done alone. I’m also learning how to make just about anything. The path towards mad scientist has taken me straight into the arms of invention.

Step 3: Follow the siren's call once in a while and wander off the beaten path

One of my mentors walks up to me one day and says, “I know you can’t afford to go on a semester abroad, but we’ve arranged a scholarship. Would you like to go to Milan in the fall?” Someone is looking out for me, it may be a blind watchmaker, or a cat that has been trapped too long in a box, or a venerable senior designer/professor who sees something in my work that I can't see. It'd be nice to say I remembered to go back and thank him later in life. I found out he passed away recently and there was a retrospective of his work in Chicago. I missed it.

Aside: If you're 22 and reading this. Start a journal and remember those who went out of their way to help you on your adventure. If you're like me, it'll be a long list.

A year later I’ve had lunch with the designer of the Ferrari Testa Rosa, lived a few blocks from the Duomo di Milano, worked on a new international airport and the opening of a "furniture of the future" exhibition on the massive fairgrounds of the Salone del Mobile. I’ve blown glass in Murano with a surly group of wise old/young men, I’ve accompanied hoodlums as they roamed two thousand year old ruins and left Banksy style messages scrawled across the broken landscape yearning for a better day.

I’ve seen the power of design to tell epic myths and to punch you in the gut with beauty, and to inspire you to great heights. I've watched legendary designers talk themselves into believing their most bizarre dreams of the future are inevitable. I’ve learned that the kid that I couldn't stand because he was making me pick up my game and actually try was thinking the same thing about me. Somehow on the other side of the world we are now room mates and taking on the world together destined to be lifelong foils and friends.

I’ve learned that respect is worth giving for those that inspire and challenge you. I’ve found new patron saints in Corbusier, Gaudi, Breton, Strummer, and Van der Rohe.

I’ve learned that the country I call home is quite a bit more magical than I ever knew. An experiment in hybrid vigor the likes of which the world has never seen, even if it's sometimes a little too full of itself.

I’m humbled and I’m learning how to not only daydream, but also go out and think by doing.

It's all harder and easier than it looks. I fall far more than I'm probably leading you to believe. I stumble and turn red with shame wondering if this is the time I should just stay down. But every single time someone is there to dust me off. Crack wise. Get me on my way again. Strangers. Friends. Strange friends.

I am slowly realizing that we are all emergent properties of each other. We are in the act of becoming and creating as we walk, sometimes together, sometimes alone.

All too soon I am back and regaling the beautiful woman on my arm about the odd and wonderful world beyond the horizon. She walked me over to the School of Art and Architecture on a whim not that long ago. I almost broke her heart by seeming, to her at least, oblivious.

I will marry her and spend decades learning the secrets of her smile, we will stay up long nights worrying about our child as he goes under the knife, coma bound, wondering if we can save him from the pressure building in his head. We will watch him not only survive, but turn into a person far more confident and sure than either of us will ever be. One day I will be on the top of a Mayan ruin with our child and he will catch me when I stumble. As I write this he is with me in Africa on a father and son expedition to the highest falls in the world. I won't know how I, we, the world, found our way. Dream walking step by step is my only explanation.

But that’s all in the future. Today I turn 22 and I'm working on a required course where I have to learn how to organize my thoughts and write. This is one of my most visceral horrors. I went to public school my friends. Someone always passed me along without really caring if I learned an adjective from an adverb. But to move on I need to pass this class. The teacher oddly enough doesn't really care if I know what I'm doing. He spends long hours marking up every single failure with a page number index so that I can learn what I'm doing wrong. But somehow he seems to think ideas are more important than form and not only encourages me to keep going, he tells the class that I suck at grammar and that I'm going to now read something wonderful to them from my fevered mind. Constructive, loving criticism from a complete stranger is entirely new to me. His name is Peter Keough. If you ever meet him on your journeys buy him a drink (but don't blame him that I never learned to stop running on).

Soon I'm challenged to read authors that a year ago I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I roam down a passage by Baudelaire and realize that this was what my mom was hoping I’d do all along.

Step 4: Move through the fugitive and the infinite

“The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flaneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.” - Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

If I were 22 again I’d try harder to be a curious wanderer, one part flaneur, one part experimentalist, a bit more humble than I remember myself being the first time around, maybe wipe that sometimes smug smile off my face because the world has turned out to be a much bigger place than I could have ever imagined. Self awareness is a skill that takes a lifetime to learn. I’d channel more of my mom, realize that the most direct route doesn’t always work, trust in others that they’ll figure it out if you just give them a chance. I’d also make sure that my arms were big enough to love the world and to squeeze it a bit and make it squeak and scream.

Step 5: Get out of here, but remember we’ll be here if you need us.

No, really. Why are you reading this article?

Youth is so wasted on the young.

You just turned 22. Don't ask me where to go, just start walking and step by step you'll find your own way. If I have any last piece of advice I'd remind you that you are not alone. Be there for others when they fall.

We'll be here for you if you need us.