The Delights of Distraction No.64: 10 things I wish I knew when I was 20

This is an excerpt from the weekly newsletter my co-founder and I write weekly at The Wishing Chair blog. You can read the complete newsletter here.

Last week was Ami’s birthday. Once you hit your 40s, with all the smug-hood of Don’t-give-a-f*ck-itude, burgeoning wisdom (and matching thighs), it’s prudent to look back and take stock of what brought you here. If only she knew then what you know now. Here’s some advice from Ami to her 20-year old self.?

1. Your only companion through this ride is… no, not your future husband - it’s your body. Right now you’re young with the metabolism of a raging forest fire, so you take your body for granted - but trust me, you’ll pay the price 20 years later with aching knees and swollen feet! Please, treat your body well. Move, join a yoga class, feed yourself some nourishing foods, do silly things with your hands and feet, even if it’s drawing with crayons or knitting like your Biji. OTOH, your future husband will go through life guzzling ladoo boxes like a mithai monster and still stay fit… but that’s life! You’ll get used to the unfairness of it all :)
2. Allow yourself the luxury of changing your opinion or beliefs. Yes you’re 20, so you think you know everything there is to know, and I’m just a conservative fuddy-duddy, but honestly, I’m baffled by some of the things you believed. Growth is looking back and feeling a little cringe about some of the things you did, stood for or believed. Evolution is the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual surrender to new information, learning and curiosities through which your interior world can undergo a slow transformation. Phew, thank goodness you grew up (and continue to do so!)
3. Wealth - and freedom from the tyrannies of debt is not just about the money you make, but the money you hold on to. Create a little rainy day fund for when shit hits the fan, because baby-doll, shit WILL hit the fan. Shit comes for all of us. So put down that sixth, over-priced TGIF cocktail and stash that leftover cash in your SIP fund.
4. Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it. It’s cute that you have all these plans - but most of life is a series of random events, flukes and hopefully some lucky breaks - all mostly out of your control. You have to learn to embrace the spontaneous, the unexpected, the unknown. The only thing you can control is the lens you look at it all through and the story you tell yourself later. So learn to weave a really good story.
5. The days are long but the years are short. Keep a little journal, using whatever is at hand, - a notebook, an excel sheet - and note down all the details of things that delight you. This will help you cultivate your capacity for joy and wonder; to have a sense of presence and gratitude for the moments that make life worth living.?
6. Your comparisons with others are a result of naive assumptions. Stop contrasting the dark, ugly insides of your mind to the shiny, photoshopped showreels of others. You don’t know what is in someone’s head. Everyone has insecurities and anxieties that plague them, regardless of how “successful” they may seem. Everybody is afraid of the same things - failure and looking stupid. Many people who seem to be gliding right along have suffered and are suffering. We all have our demons.
7. Nothing worth having comes easy - a happy marriage, a meaningful friendship, fulfilling work, a healthy body - anything that truly matters is hard work and will need you to show up and persist. As Woody Allen says, “80% of success is just showing up”. Few things go from bud to blossom in one spritely burst and yet, the slow, painful unfurling is where all the real magic unfolds in the making of your character and destiny.
8. “When you’re 20, you care what everyone thinks, when you’re 40 you stop caring what everyone thinks, when you’re 60, you realize no one was ever thinking about you in the first place.”Yup, nobody really cares. They may gossip about it, give your parents grief about it, but they would find excuses to do that even if you were the most obedient kid in the world. So stop taking yourself so seriously - and just go ahead and be the person you want to be. The pain of un-inhibiting yourself will be fleeting and the reward of “zero f*cks given” will last a lifetime.?
9. You’ll start to notice all the ways your parents screwed up when you were little; it will be gruelling and painful process that can kick up some bitterness and resentment. But you’ll also realize that they were barely older than you while they were fumbling through parenthood (without the internet), they’re flawed, vulnerable, struggling people just trying to do their best. You’ll learn to accept and forgive them, and when the illusion of “my daddy strongest” comes tumbling down as the years bear down hard, you’ll learn to treasure every moment with your messy, flawed family that much more.?
10. Joy will simply not happen to you. You have to choose joy and choose it again and again every single day. Your mind naturally turns to the negative - so train yourself to choose joy, even if your knees hurt, or the meds aren’t working, or the car breaks down. “Joy is not a function of life that is free of friction or frustration, but a function of focus.”

https://wishingchair.in/blogs/we-love/the-delights-of-distraction-no-64-10-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-was-20