Crossing the Threshold
Travelling and seeing the world might all be great experiences. But an even more profound experience is realizing your dreams.
A big problem of my generation – and mine too, for that matter – is entitlement.
It comes in various forms, but mainly in crazy expectations about what we must achieve in our twenties. As if simply deciding to become Successful or an Entrepreneur or Writer or Content Creator is enough to become those things automatically. Changing your Instagram profile to ‘writer’ is supposed to turn you into a New York Times bestselling author and give you a contract with The New Yorker (also keynotes, speeches, podcasts, and all other forms of glory). We live by magical thinking and don’t even realize it.
My generation doesn’t want to hear about paying your dues, pushing trolleys with granola, or taking entry-level jobs in our twenties.
That’s for other people. For losers. Me? I am following my passion. And if I am following my passion, I must be an overnight success. Because that’s what it takes to become one – simply be true to who you are. Right? Right? RIGHT?!
Wrong.
The American success and self-help culture have sold us on a dangerous idea.
They told us we must
a) spend our twenties running away from commitments and looking for ourselves (ideally via backpacking across Asia and taking LSD);
b) finding your thing, your calling, and your passion is all there is to becoming a successful individual. These ideas are supported heavily by mainstream media and books. The Four-Hour-Workweek. The Secret. Eat, Pray, Love. You name it.
(Few people know that Liz Gilbert was a published author long before EPL and received an advance of tens of thousands of dollars to go around the world ‘looking for herself’ while eating pasta and having sex in Bali as part of her post-divorce journey.)
The harsh truths I came to realize only recently – because, as I said at the beginning of this email, I too am not immune from the lure of the Passion Lie – are the following:
You don’t become successful in your 20s. You just don’t. Period.
You become successful in your 30s, 40s, and 50s.
But to do that, you need to spend your 20s building a foundation for that success by investing in your skills and experiences and building Identity Capital – i.e., things your 30-40-50-year-old self can capitalize on.
If you spend your twenties and thirties looking for yourself on the beaches of Bali, here’s what might happen. You’ll wake up one day, 39, look around, and see all your friends married, with houses, jobs, all the stuff they’ve accumulated in the past two decades, while you…
…well, you would have spent that time being ‘free’. Whatever that even means.
The romantic notion of being unattached, free, and reckless in your 20s is overrated. It’s also an illusion. The percentage of people who can get away with being late bloomers – i.e., running away from adulthood into their 30s – is surprisingly low. The truth is your 20s matter. And they matter because you have the opportunity to embark on a proverbial Journey that will set you up for life.
Think Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. The monomyth works in stories because that’s how the human mind works. That’s how humans think about themselves and their lives. You’re born and brought up in the Ordinary World. That’s your childhood. Then you hear a Call for Adventure. That’s growing up. You Refuse the Call, of course. It’s too risky. Too scary. You don’t want to hear about paying the bills, finding an apartment, and taking responsibility for your life. But the story – any story, for that matter – starts only when the Hero (you) takes the call and goes on a Journey into an Outer World, full of dangers, risk, monsters, and enemies, only to return with an Elixir / Sword / Gift back to the Ordinary World. (That would be you writing a book about your life). But if you don’t Cross the Threshold and don’t take your chances, your story doesn’t even start.
Many entitled twenty-year-olds, obsessed with finding themselves and prolonging childhood, miss out on the best experience of their lives: living out their story.
I get it. I truly do. Not wanting to be an adult is understandable. It’s hard. All those stories of people making reckless decisions – such as packing up their bags and going to China or selling their house and starting a business venture – are out there.
We want to matter. We want to feel special. We want a beautiful Instagram account. We don’t want to be like other people. Above all, we don’t want to be boring.
But other people – almost everyone – live like that for a reason: because that’s how it’s done.
The questions to ask yourself are:
What do you want? Like, really?
And what can you do now to get an inch closer to that? How can you spend the next five years building the foundation for that, so you can become that in your 30s and 40s and 50s?
Does this mean you should take entry-level jobs when it seems like everyone else is travelling and following their passion? Does this mean you should be working lower than your pay grade and doing something you don’t think is glamorous or looks great on Instagram? Does this mean you should be dedicating your 20s to paying your dues?
Yes. It does. Because that’s how it’s done.
Nobody cares about your life as much as you do. Travelling and seeing the world might all be great experiences. But an even more profound experience is realizing your dreams.
Cross the Threshold.
– SF, London, 6th September 2022.
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