A few months before I turned 30, I came across an article written by clinical psychologist Meg Jay, which inspired me to watch her TED talk below — Why 30 is not the new 20.
It made me reflect on how I’d spent my own 20s, what advice I’d give to my 20 year old self, and also how I’d like to spend my 30s.
Whoever you are, whatever you’re doing, it’s definitely worth watching.
Do you agree with this? If you’re 20, has it changed the way you’re going to approach the rest of this decade? If you’re 30, do you think you lived your 20s in the right way? What advice do you have for others?
What I learnt about my 20s from experiencing a Punchdrunk performance
Before I go any further, I want to talk about the Punchdrunk theatre show, the Drowned Man. Like any good book, song or film, when I experienced this play at 26, it blew my mind and left a lasting impression that still makes me think today.
The show took place in a large four storey warehouse in London, where the whole building became the stage and the audience was free to wander wherever they wanted. The only way you could tell the audience from the actors is that all audience members had to wear masks.
You entered the play in a lift and you were encouraged to experience the performance by yourself. I spent the first 20 minutes or so, running excitedly around the whole building/ set trying to absorb as much as possible.
I watched some of the actors dancing or performing for a bit; I observed other people watching the show; and I opened up parts of the set to discover that it was all real. Even the set draws had documents or photos inside that you could open and look at. The whole thing was part art installation, dance, performance, interactive and dream like…It broke boundaries and mixed art forms and I just absolutely loved it.
Once I’d seen enough in my aimless excited wandering phase of the performance, I decided to watch a fight scene that lots of people had crowded around to see on the 3rd floor. Once the fight and the main action was over, everyone left, except for a few of us. I stayed to watch the actor who had lost the fight and chose to follow only his story for the next 30 minutes. As I followed him, other members of the audience came and went.
And then, when I was least expecting it, the actor I’d been following, took hold of my hand and made me run with him into a gypsy caravan. Inside, he took my mask off, gave me a shot of whisky (real whisky!), recited poetry to me and blindfolded me, leading my backwards through a short corridor with red lights. He then opened a door after taking my blindfold off and putting my mask back on, and whispered in my ear ‘don’t look back’.
I know you might be reading this and thinking, that sounds horrible, but for me, to have this happen completely unexpectedly, was incredibly exciting and left me with a real high for the rest of the performance. It made me rethink theatre and also question my approach to life.
For the remainder of the show, I just relaxed and enjoyed each moment for what it was.
I wanted to mention Punchdrunk because I feel that my 20s have been split between intense periods of focus and planning, along with aimless wandering and drifting. My approach to the play pretty much mirrored my approach to life.
Reflecting on my 20s. How did/should/would you do it?
Reflecting on the last 10 years, I feel like I’ve lived multiple lives in that so much has happened and changed, but it doesn’t necessarily fit seamlessly together. Did I do it right? Would Meg approve?
Meg Jay argues in her TED talk that “30 is not the new 20” and “as a culture we have trivialised what is actually the defining decade of adulthood… Newspapers talk about the changing timetable of adulthood. Researchers call the 20s an extended adolescence. Journalists coin silly nicknames like twixters and kadults.”
She goes on to say, “I’m not discounting 20 something exploration here, but I am discounting exploration that’s not supposed to count, which, by the way is not exploration. That’s procrastination.”
I’m not going to give you my life story of the last 10 years, but I can provide some context.
In the first half of my 20s, I wandered around in an excited daydream, observing/experiencing life, going with the flow, finding myself making changes every few months, exploring the world, taking a series of jobs that were all different — some I liked, some I didn’t. My life in this period was like a large tapas meal or sample collection. I was on a mission to taste everything but I never went into any real depth with anything.
The second half of my twenties were a lot more focused and involved consciously deciding on a career based on the things I enjoyed after I read the book What color is your parachute? I created some stability in my life, had a long term relationship, stayed in my home for longer than a year and worked my way up into a position that sounded pretty good on a CV. In this phase, I started, built and finished a career in three years, doubled my income from my early 20s and went from loving what I did for a job to being really unfulfilled by it.
There’s nothing wrong with either of these options — both worked out for me at the time, and then I wanted to do something different. The thought of drifting through life making no plans now feels like a cop out and the thought of remaining in the career I was in feels safe and a boring. So, at 29, I had to rethink how I truly wanted to live my life again which felt quite exciting and scary at the same time.
What advice would I give to my 20 year old self?
Accept and allow whatever it is you’re feeling without judging yourself or thinking that your feelings are somehow wrong. Make decisions using your heart and head. Don’t be so quick to form premature judgements about the world and what you think you want.
Do what you enjoy. Be with people you enjoy spending time with and always trust your intuition and find what feels right for you. There are infinite ways to live and rather than listening to everyone else, go with what feels right for you.
Final thoughts
I think philosopher and writer Alan Watts provides a good place to start regardless of your age.
“Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students. They come to me and say, well, ‘we’re getting out of college and we haven’t the faintest idea of what we want to do’. So I always ask the question, what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?”
I was also listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast recently and although I can’t remember who he was, the guy he was interviewing gave the following advice — if you want to find out what you truly want to do in life and where your passions lie ask yourself the following question:
‘If you were given one billion dollars to make the world a better place what would you spend it on?’ Take some paper and a pen and just write out your ideas without giving it much thought.
And finally, I’m going to leave you with this short Alan Watts video: what if money was no object? Enjoy.
What are your thoughts? Is Alan Watts right? Is Meg Jay Right? How would you make the world a better place with a billion pounds/dollars? What are your own experiences and thoughts on being or becoming a 20 something? How should we approach relationships, a career, or life in general?
