Five Lessons My Twenties Taught Me

I’ve never thought of myself as a “Therapist”; more so, a human being privileged to learn about himself through the stories of others . . . and my twenties taught me a lot!

I am now thirty year’s old. Although I feel young at heart—and many would argue that I am, in fact, still young—the beginning of a new decade beckons me to pause and reflect upon the lessons taught to me within the classroom of my twenties. I’ve used writing to reflect ever since I can remember. I have pages and pages and pages of journal entries filled with chapter’s worth of streams of consciousness; I have whole books to go back over, to help me draw a distinction between the boy who used to look up at the stars at night and the man the stars observe now. Whilst the essence of who I am hasn’t changed much, little nuggets of wisdom—both earned and enforced upon me—have emerged.

If my twenties were a classroom, I was the least motivated student in the cohort. I was not the kid who sat up at the front, putting all the other kids to shame with dog-eared pages in books and scribbles of notes in the blanks, all highlighted and colour coordinated. I, on the other hand, was “sick” and absent most of the time, and barely awake at school. Still, the lessons were taught, and I was forced to pay attention; some I barely understood, others I downright failed. And then there were those that I couldn’t avoid, even if I wanted to. These were the lessons that informed me not of the world but about myself—and they were also the hardest to learn.

At the time, my worlds fell apart. Relinquishing longstanding ties with old friends and becoming untethered from belief systems that maintained my sense of self—staunch atheism, for example, and the belief that someone would always be there to rescue me—destabilised my identity, thereby exposing the existential groundlessness and cosmic indifference inherent to being. My worlds fell apart and I fell for an eternity. Although painful at the time, my falling has reached terminal velocity, for the most part, and I now feel more like I’m gliding. Analogies aside, I feel calmer, a bit more centred, and my hope is that I can say the same when I inevitably reflect upon the lessons of my thirties.

Life is a mandated curriculum. We do not get to decide whether to attend the school of life or not. Rather, it is the price we pay for breathing air into our lungs. Resistance is futile, lest we welcome the neuroses that await us behind denial. So, we can either decide to suffer voluntarily or go kicking and screaming into that dark night. We are all, right now, wandering the halls of the school of life; and whether we like it or not, we will be taught lessons about ourselves and the world. Challenges and personal suffering are our tests, our opportunities to grow, and choosing not to grow is, in itself, a lesson—a lesson not worth learning. With that in mind, here are five lessons my twenties taught me:

Number One: Becoming who we are is a mixture of finding and creating ourselves.

When we don’t yet know who we are, we mimic others. This, I believe, is both a necessary and healthy part of growing up. We need to figure out what fits and what doesn’t, like clothes. In this way, we find ourselves by figuring out who we aren’t. Making mistakes, experimenting, travelling, taking the road less travelled and “kissing frogs” (as mum says) is how we all stumble forward toward adulthood.

I believe that coming to a place of wholeness and centredness is a product of both self-discovery and self-creation. The former borders on reclaiming elements of authenticity prior to external influence and the latter relies on trialling, risk-taking, spontaneity and, at times, courage. Put simply, we both find and create ourselves. Upon reflection, a part of me feels that “I” was always there, beneath that large pile of clothes, waiting for “me” to return home. “I” enjoyed watching myself ride the ups and downs of self-assertion, narcissism and inevitable guilt and uncertainty. That all still happens now, albeit less intensely. In other words, I feel as if I’m bridging the gap between the ‘self’ I portray to others and the ‘self’ buried beneath the skin and bones. That part of me tells me that adulthood is, in part, about reconciling with the child we left behind as we embarked upon the adventures of our lives, seeking and valuing things and people we no longer desire. That part of me tells me that the adventure of life is about coming back to ourselves and reuniting with the selves that were waiting for us from the beginning, as though the prodigal son and his father were, in fact, different aspects of the same person.

Then there’s the part of me that has been, and is being, created—endlessly, and at times, entropically. This part of me tells me that I’m a dynamic creation, continuously throwing out disingenuous personalities like old, worn out clothes. I’m a cocktail, not a fine wine; but I strive to be a fine wine! I strive to be “me”, and just me, without anyone else’s input.

But the part of me that, I think, has it right, suggests that identity is found, created and dynamic. In other words, we are all a mixture of each of our experiences put together. All that has made something seemingly unique. Authenticity, therefore, is an accepting of the many personalities that we present to the world; the combination of attitudes and behaviours the world demands of us in conjunction with those we are willing to display. By embracing the many, we become one.

Number Two: Most of our big problems aren’t solvable; but they are manageable.

According to research conducted by John Gottman, a renowned relationships expert and co-founder of the Gottman Institute, 69% of couple conflict is perpetual. What this means is that over two-thirds of relational issues won’t go away and are, therefore, best seen as issues to be managed, not solved. In my own life, and in working with both individuals and couples, I have come to believe that the major existential issues of our lives are perpetual too. As a deep admirer of Existential Psychotherapy, and something I rely upon heavily in my clinical practice, I welcome questions and concerns about ageing and dying, meaninglessness and isolation, as well as the overwhelming sense of responsibility one feels when one recognises free choice as a determining predictor of life satisfaction. Part of my role, I feel, when helping people move through their subjective concerns, isn’t necessarily to help them solve or figure out how to overcome these issues but, rather, to help them accept them as unceasing and enduring anxieties prevalent in the minds of the self-aware. In this light, self-awareness is both a blessing and a curse, an “upwards fall” as I once heard it so wonderfully put.

The concept of death is a pertinent example—one in which illuminates the benefit of managing inner conflict as opposed to attempting to solve, overcome or annihilate it completely. Though the denial of death serves an appropriate function, complete ignorance or repression will lead to neuroses. Likewise, becoming all too consumed with the concept of death will leave one nihilistic and void of ambition. In this way, befriending death is a balancing act, an oscillation between the acceptance of one’s inevitable expiration—which engenders both humility and compassion—and a striving to optimise the time one has left. (Empirical evidence supports the correlation between life satisfaction and death acceptance, and important research has been conducted in this area utilising questionnaires submitted by elderly men and women.) It is as Ernest Becker writes: “The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” The question, therefore, we must all answer ourselves is this: Since we cannot overcome a physical death, how can we make the idea of death more manageable?

For much of my twenties, I strove to chase and fulfil my passions, find my purpose, cultivate meaning and live the good life. I am only now beginning to realise that, woven into each of those pursuits, was an unconscious resistance to everyday responsibilities. That I would one day come to accept a groundhog-like existence was something I feared immensely. When discussing the theme of routine to my clients, I am often met with blunt objection—at worst—and fervent discussion at best. I believe that us moderns have given routine a bad rap. By climbing out of the pits of twentieth-century geopolitical turmoil, we now consider ourselves worthy of the good life—and so we should! But the good life isn’t merely the pleasurable life. Routine, responsibility, and the occasional groundhog day are inevitable for the everyday citizen. They foster a sense of identity. Sure, routine can lead to boredom; but so can spontaneity and change lead to aimlessness. Again, I present to you a dichotomy to be managed, not a problem to be solved.

Although scary at first, these “givens” of life—death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness, as psychiatrist Dr. Irvin Yalom states—like ongoing couple conflict, can be managed, tolerated and even enjoyed if integrated and accepted into life. Though we may try to outrun them, we eventually realise that we cannot outrun ourselves, our finiteness; and just as our need for oxygen is an inevitable and inextricable part of living, so too is acceptance of the things that we cannot control. That said, if we relinquish our desire to, we may find the peace we were searching for all along. As Yalom writes, in one of my very favourite books Staring at the Sun: “Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life. This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.”

Number Three: “Your breath Is Your Reality”.

In late March 2019, I tried my first Jiu Jitsu class. It was a giant shock for my ego. VFL try-outs and multiple CrossFit competitions were no match for white belts with only a few more weeks of training to their name, relative to me (never mind about black belts!). I’d played competitive football all my life; I’d competed in weightlifting too; yet still, I had nothing. At one point, I actually asked a blue belt how this could be happening—how I could so easily be pinned down and choked—to which he replied, “It’s all good mate, you’re a white belt.” Yes I was. And now that I am a blue belt, I can look back on the past four years of sweating on the mats with reverence, having taken some truly important life lessons away. 

Here’s a big one: When we’re afraid of something, we should do it repeatedly, yet consciously, and with incremental difficulty, until the fear subsides. One of the most challenging things about Jiu Jitsu is that one will only ever improve as a consequence of doing more Jiu Jitsu. The sport demands time on the mat. This is difficult when time on the mat—avoiding being choked so as to try to choke others—induces an anxiety response like it has every so often for me. I’ll most likely feel anxious when I’ve run out of breath and have been pinned to the bottom. It’ll make me feel claustrophobic and downhearted. Sometimes I’ll notice the beginnings of a panic attack brewing in my belly. Yet, at the same time, I’ll also recognise a sense of accomplishment. This is because challenge forces necessary adaption. Whenever we’re challenged, we’re uncomfortable, yet simultaneously fulfilled. This ‘place’ is known as the zone of proximal development, and it is a place I both despise yet equally long for.

There’s a saying in Jiu Jitsu which is, “You either win or you learn.” This idea has helped me immensely off the mats too, as it keeps me focused not on winning the trivial battles of my life but on the only war that matters: the war of the mind; the quest for self-satisfaction (and if you’re not sure how you’re doing, pay attention to the thoughts that come up when your head hits the pillow at night, just before you fall asleep). Failure means learning. I have found that the greatest and most informative classes on the mat came about after successive losses. You don’t learn anything when you win. What you already knew was simply reinforced. This feels great and it’s comfortable too; but if life is an endless pursuit of fulfilment that comes from striving, what really is the point of winning other than something akin to a temporary, satisfying checkpoint? 

In any case, the biggest takeaway from Jiu Jitsu, thus far, is actually something a black belt told me once. He said, “Your breath is your reality”. After a roll, he explained to me some things I should take into account to improve my game. I was expecting him to tell me about positional deficiencies that had showed up in our roll, but he spoke only of my breathing. He told me to think of my breath as both a reflection and marker of how I was making decisions in real time. “If your breathing is fast and shallow, you can bet that you’re making emotional, irrational and weak decisions on the mat, and higher belts will capitalise on that, all day every day.” Immediately I thought about the wider implications of his wisdom—and I’ve since made it a point to always check in on my breathing when faced with a difficult decision at home or at work.

Number Four: Love Is A Choice

To love is to decide to love, to be a loving force for another or for something or someone outside oneself. In the beginning, love is given to us, like a drug. We take the pill or drink to extreme, and we fall into wonder, a heavenly honeymoon of adoration, devotion, and surrender. Despite how addictive this initial state of attraction is—and some evidence suggests that our serotonin levels are 40% higher during the early stages of a relationship—we know, deep down, that we will come down off the drug and fall into the pit of reality with a loud thud. Try as we might to swim forever in that warm fountain of youth, we cannot escape the truth, which is simply that our lovers are human beings, just like us. Eventually, the rose-coloured glasses are removed, and we see them not as Gods but as imperfect humans—that of which that have every right to be.

Although this might sound like a bleak outcome for a once so joyous encounter, it doesn’t have to be. Our culture is obsessed exclusively with the first stages of a relationship. Hollywood makes the bulk of its money off the initial six-month love affair, when everything about the other is perfect. The “rom com” movies we all know and love usually end just as the two characters we’ve all fallen in love with kiss for the first time. Truth be told, they haven’t even begun their relationship! I find this disconcerting because it has a significant impact on what we who don’t find ourselves walking to the beat of symphony orchestras, glowing beautifully under perfect lighting, perceive love and relationships to be. In the words of the late Jungian analyst, Robert A. Johnson, “One of the great paradoxes in romantic love is that it never produces human relationship as long as it stays romantic. It produces drama, daring adventures, wondrous, intense love scenes, jealousies, and betrayals; but people never seem to settle into relationship with each other as flesh-and-blood human beings until they are out of the romantic love stage, until they love each other instead of being “in love.”

In my own life, I have found it helpful to equate romance with drug intoxication. Whilst it might be alluring and even nostalgic insofar as one longs for the way things were, it is a healthy reminder, nonetheless, to view passion as a temporary state as opposed to a place we may get to if only we found the right person (and we all know someone who couldn’t help but take the latter perspective). To put that kind of pressure on someone else is, to say the least, unfair.

Love is a choice. The value of our love is reflected in the ways we act, day in day out. Despite the obvious imperfections of our significant other, why do we find ourselves going above and beyond for them? Most of us would say something like, “Well, because it’s worth it.” In the sacred covenant of marriage, couples all over the world can be heard saying, “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” We like to think of the latter two statements as a sign of devotion and reverence for our significant others—and that they are. Yet seldom do we stop to ponder what we mean by “. . . or for worse.” Why stay with someone if they’re going to make our lives worse? Whilst there may be many reasons for this (economic and/or financial, for example), a possible justification might also be found in the value of routine and discipline: “No matter how bad things get, I’m not leaving you.”

We love freedom in the west. We love dancing to the beat of our own drum, going our own way, living “our truth” (as though truth were somehow synonymous with “perspective”), finding our purpose and being authentic. These are all wonderful privileges, but if freedom isn’t bounded necessarily, it can become overwhelming, all-too consuming and entropic (and I must add that, coincidentally, as I write these words, a certain song by Candi Staton can be heard playing in the background). Maybe the value of routine, discipline and responsibility is lost in our contemporary culture? No! We want passion, lust, desire, adventure, pain, longing, betrayal—and then we want all that again, repeatedly. Pertinently, Johnson states, “We don’t like anything that is “simple”: To us “simple” means dull or dense or stupid. We have forgotten that simplicity is a need in human life: It is the human art of finding meaning and joy in the small, natural, and less dramatic things.”

After six years of difficult, loving, meaningful work, and in working with couples from different backgrounds at different stages in their lives—and, I must add, having been modelled honest, imperfect, and vulnerable couple communication by my parents—I have come to believe that love is a choice. It is not a falling in, but a standing up for. When we fall in love, we are like leaves in a chaotic wind. But when we stand in love, we stand beside those we love, choosing to love despite the challenges the wind brings with it. Love is self-assurance and servitude, not aimlessness and a free-fall. Despite the unpredictability of the world, we have something—someone—to stand and die for, give to and contend with. This is who we have chosen and now the quality of our relationship is determined by our continuing to choose. If, ultimately, we are willing to replace the highest highs of romance with the contentment of a meaningful, conscious, continual choosing, we will not be subject to the lowest lows of passion’s darker side—the side Hollywood fails to portray.

Number Five: The intensity of our grieving matches the depth of our love.

In September 2022, our beloved senior Beagle, Steve, passed away from congestive heart failure. I wrote extensively about how special he was in a previous blog, so I’ll avoid going into detail here; but his passing taught me a valuable lesson about the price we pay for love, whether we are aware of the payment or not. Steve became an integral part of our family within minutes. He was so happy to befriend our other dogs and, after over a decade of neglect, was happy to settle into a home in which we were happy to provide.

I found out he’d died on my way to work. My partner was hysterical over the phone, lost for words in a fury of shock and immense sadness. I later found out that she’d held him as he took his last breath. I, however, was in work mode and felt somewhat detached from the whole thing—that is, until I came home and saw his body lying peacefully on our couch. Immediately, I felt a wave of contradicting emotions that persisted for weeks. I was happy that he was no longer in pain, just as I felt a physical pain loom, unable to breathe at the sight of his still corpse and my partner kneeling beside him, looking like she’d put on wet clothes straight from the washing machine. I wasn’t far behind her. Tears flowed like water from a broken dam that day. We didn’t say much, nor could we predict the waves of despair.

Researchers are beginning to view grief more like a brain injury than a mere emotional state. Interestingly, MRI scans show that similar parts of the brain light up when someone is grieving just as if they’d been through a traumatic experience or undergone physical injury. Put simply, grieving evokes a fight/flight response as the brain tries desperately to adapt to a new life, one without the other who influenced not only physical objects in one’s direct environment, but subjective emotional states and, more importantly, one’s values.

Grief proved to me that I loved Steve much more than I gave myself credit for. I knew I loved him, but the pain of those initial six weeks was something I’d never felt before, a pain like no other. I continually found it very difficult to breathe and often felt on the verge of panic. I condemned myself at certain times for failing to give him one last present cuddle; then condemned myself for not doing my best to be there for my partner who was also clearly struggling. The word ‘stuck’ aptly describes these series of events.

Looking back, however, I am met with a sense of peace because I know that that kind of grief is what was owed for what my partner and I received in return. I am still unsure as to whether I could subject myself to that kind of pain once again; but, in saying that I recognise that I am choosing to do so right now, and every day, as my two other dogs lie asleep on the ground beside me whilst my partner works on her business on the opposite table. In fact, by living and choosing to relate to others deeply, I, and all of us, accept grief a priori. Grief is the interest owed on a credit card. Eventually, what we owe must be paid. The only escape from grief is premature death or a withdrawing from the vulnerability that love demands. And since I could do neither, I must accept grief when it knocks on my door once again. Hopefully that won’t be for a while.

***

There are so many other lessons taught by my twenties, and an honourable mention must go to my mum who taught me to never—and I really mean never—give up on the people we love. Still, what my twenties have taught me about identity, the existential ‘givens’, fear, love, and loss leave me with what I can only describe as a more rounded, clear and, if I’m honest, less exciting perspective on life. I can’t help but feel less enthusiastic about life as my awareness of all that it brings with it grows by the day—much of which I have discussed above. However, deep within me, I, too, recognise a burgeoning sense of contentment. For the value of life, contrasted by its fragility, is something that was lost on me as a child. I am looking forward to what my thirties will bring. I hope to have further digested the givens of life and, in doing so, welcome the ups and downs inherent within my third decade of breathing.