25 and Changing

Sunday nights always seem to bring out the most thought. The weekend events are bundled together into one blur and the demons gnaw away at it. You realise how big and bad the real world has become. My life’s not bad at all, I’ve been spoon-fed every waking minute and this has crystalized my future, up until now at least. We sit on the cusp at which every small decision we make can change the rest of our lives. The longer we wait the harder it gets for us to reinvent ourselves.

25 is an odd age. Everyone around you has to start making lifelong decisions. There’s no turning back I guess. A bit dramatic but that’s what it feels like. Johannesburg is a minefield of confused 20 somethings, all trying to figure out what the next best decision is. I’m right here in the middle. We don’t know if we love our jobs or if we are getting what we deserve. We still want to pick up a guitar or surf board if we haven’t already. We wonder whether we should travel more or travel at all. We wonder if our current relationship is the right one. We worry we may never find that relationship. You find yourself too scared to make a concrete decision and too scared to fall behind at the same time. Again, dramatic but that’s how it is. Even doing nothing is a decision in its own and I can’t dare be defined by what I didn’t do or didn’t know. I can’t help but think that too many people (including myself) may just be prolonging uncertainty.

The other fear is that of a lack of desperation. A good friend of mine told me that instead of jumping into your next job, maybe take a chance and allow yourself to get desperate. This desperation will turn to innovation and the need to start something from scratch. That stuck. Desperation ignites innovation. I’ve come this far in my cushy world to at least give it a bash.

So in my quest to make the right decisions I’ve realised that the right decisions are defined by what drives curiosity. We are in the perfect space to experiment with love and jobs. I’ve learnt that it becomes less of a game of impressing everyone around you and more a game of setting up all the right moves, each one becoming more intentional and more informed than the last. I’m sure we all agree that the mistakes we’ve made have been defining moments looking back. Mistakes are as a result of a decision. So make them.

More than anything this post is a challenge to myself to fight the disease of speaking more than doing.

By Just Kicking It Brether Peter van Doesburgh