Gap year is over. What I learnt & what's next...

I just finished the gap year I took in 2021.

It was my 2nd sabbatical in life. The first one was for three months in 2011, around the time I had turned 30. The underlying quest both times - how to craft the next decade for a happy and healthy 100-year life? In my first sabbatical, I learnt about the five foundations (money, health, relationships, career, identity) necessary for life 2.0 (a life we run at our own pace in our own race). It triggered a decade long quest to get ready for life 2.0 transition at 40 by putting these five foundations in place.

As I turned 40, I took a gap year to explore what I wanted to do next. Today, I wanted to recap the key learnings at the end of my gap year journey and what's next.

As gap year started to wrap up in the last few months, the question of my life purpose and what's next inevitably cropped up in most conversations with myself and others. I was supposed to have figured out my life purpose by now. Initially, I would give neat answers as if I had it all figured out for the next 10-20 years. Yet, something felt untrue. So far, critical turns in my life have happened serendipitously (e.g., graduating in the Korean language, meeting my life partner, surprising findings in both sabbaticals). Why was I suddenly pretending to know my future life and its purpose?

And what is this obsession with purpose, if not at its heart, a quest of a life well lived??And a life well-lived, I kept learning in the gap year, is a life that starts with being present in the moment for its own sake (versus treating each moment as an instrument to a future goal).

Purpose might be too heavy a word for what I see now for myself as a guide to arrange my life –?to live true to what gives energy and joy to me NOW & let life unfold over time.

What gives me energy and joy now is the complete freedom to arrange my time across life areas I currently enjoy – family & friends, tennis/ health, travel, investing, creating a social enterprise focused on helping people craft a happy and healthy 100-year life. I want to also leave enough empty spaces in life to let it continue to surprise me with its infinite possibilities.?In short, I want to live life like a gap year.

As I wrap up, I wanted to touch on what I see as meta life transition skills. I became aware of them while navigating my own gap year life transition. Since multiple life transitions (whether forced or out of choice) are inevitable in a long life, we all might need them sooner or later.

1)?To invite and be at peace with cluelessness in life?– Gap year gave me the permission to switch off the certainty addiction and be curious about understanding the nature of things. But I learnt it is hard work being clueless. I grew up celebrating certainty (and being a person who knows what he wants). It felt odd to switch off judgment and stay clueless for extended periods in this delicate life transition phase. The old life structure was outdated, yet a new one was yet to form. I saw this pattern in my gap year journey of defining my purpose. The quick first answers sounded neat and comfortable yet felt unconvincing within. Maybe, I was looking too hard for answers. Slowly, new answers emerged as I opted to stay clueless till the answers felt right within. Cultivating peace with cluelessness seems a life transition skill to help us go past the easy/ neat answers to the tough ones.

2)?To not give up on oneself or those around you?– Life transitions can be tricky, not just for us but also for people around us. If pursued with an open and curious mind, the quest for a life well-lived might land us in unexpected places post-life transitions. Places that might disappoint people around us as they struggle to re-orient their expectations versus past assumptions. Our past informs our future yet does not bind us. We can grow in unexpected dimensions. Self-growth seems proportional to the ability to tolerate the disappointment of those we care the most about. Yet, tolerating disappointment need not mean neglect.?One can choose to build understanding while not seeking validation.?To do otherwise would be to either give up on oneself (by denying our potential selves) or to give up on others (by seeking validation when even understanding might be a stretch).

3)?Learning how to fill our days when the world no longer fills them for us?– Gap year gave a sneak preview of a question almost inevitable in a 100-year life. How would we fill each day from scratch when free to do as we please 24x7? Life 1.0 prepares us to deal with time scarcity. It does not prepare us to deal with time affluence. In life 1.0, our free time (e.g., weekends, vacations) is auto-filled with what is desirable yet scarce in the 24x7 routine (e.g., family, friends, health, relaxation). Our free time is usually in short supply - just enough to realise what we are missing in our desirable life areas, never sufficient to engage with them to our heart's content. It seems incredible to suggest that if we were granted 24x7 free time, we would have any difficulty filling it. Yet, gap year makes me realise that after an initial phase of quenching the thirst, we will face an unfamiliar question:?What will we choose to be busy with??It is not a question we are prepared for, having only dealt with fragments of free time, not its abundance. The initial anxiety of this freedom will hopefully, over time, lead us to confront the question we avoid under the blessed busyness of life –?How do we define & craft a life well lived??A reckoning with ourselves is inevitable in a long 100-year life.

That's it for now. I am excited and curious about living life 2.0 and what it will bring. I will share what I learn in my life 2.0 journey from time to time.

I love hearing from you. Do share your comments if anything resonates, your own learnings or just to say hello as a friend:)

Cheers,

Sameer Srivastav

If you would like to get life 2.0 updates directly into your inbox, you can sign up here,

https://gapyearat40.ck.page/c51c38d858