015. It's been done before, but not by YOU.

Advice I wish I received in my 20s

15/100: What advice do you wish you received in your 20s?

“The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”

―Annie Dillard

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I turned 36 last month and, funny enough, what I’d tell a 20-something-year-old Nneka are still lessons I need reminding of now.

1. The time will pass anyway.

Do it scared, unprepared, doubtful, raggedy, with applause, without applause. Do it in the summer of your life, do it in the winter of your life. It does not matter. Do it.

For how far has your hesitation, your shyness, your shame gotten you?

What good is tracing your mistakes until you’ve memorized the grooves?

Don’t waste more time trying to hide your missteps, and use that energy to take another step. And another, and another. All of the most meaningful things in your life will be a byproduct of compounded effort and care. Of watering and tilling the thing when no one’s watching.

Devotion to that which you deem worthy, regardless of how long it takes, will prove more useful than any accolades.

2. Their permission is not a prerequisite.

Their praise and approval isn’t a necessity. You can start where you are, with what you have. You can change your mind, your philosophy. You can pivot and pilot and pursue. You can scream and sever and disappoint. You can proceed without well wishes and understanding and not shatter into a million pieces.

Nothing will be yours until you allow yourself to declare it. No real door in your life truly unlocked until you realize you have the key, that you are the key.

3. Don’t go to the ocean of your life with a teaspoon.

Or thimble, or bottle cap, or any other tiny objects other people may hand you. And it won’t just be from strangers or society. It’ll be from people who care for you, deeply, and still can’t help but pry open your palm and say you can’t be this, do this, take this, take what little you can of your life and drink. In love, in work, in health, in friendship.

I would tell 20-something-year-old me to toss those tiny objects, one by one, return to the ocean of your one, wondrous life and submerge.

Love,
Nneka

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15/100: What advice do you wish you received in your 20s?

Thank you for watching, reading, listening. I’m so looking forward to reading your answers to this one, friends. The wisdom you always provide will serve as an amazing archive for more than just the 20-somethings.