We, The "New Adults"

These thoughts and realizations have over the past few years given me a sense of urgency and optimism that insists on ‘Now!’

Why allow myself to miss out on the energy and opportunity of these youthful years while waiting for perfect conditions to begin doing impactful things? True, the twenties are a tumultuous and challenging time – talk of a sad lack of experience and resources, and also life, in general, is hard.

Yet there seems to be no other age as fecund and promising as this.

Speed

I refuse to buy into the mirage of ability with age. Sure, some lessons come with greyer hairs. But as for experience -  I think that that can be deliberately pursued and gained.

If experience matters in life – and it does – then I should not just sit back and wait for the hairs on my head to go grey. I can, instead, create the conditions in my life that make it possible to gain experience faster. If I am deliberate about living effectively, and if I expose myself to the right knowledge, I can be ten years ahead of my biological age. It is possible to be twenty-six with the insight of a thirty-five-year-old. I believe that such leap-frogging is necessary for us the crop of young people who are to achieve tangible impact in today’s world. We ought not to sit and wait for knowledge and experience to come to us – let’s go out and meet them halfway!

It is possible, with disciplined study and learning, to know how to think, how to decide, and how to act. Naval Ravikant refers to this as improving one’s judgment. That is what they mean when they say that experience comes with age: by the time one hits fifty, they have seen and handled enough variations of important problems enabling them to accumulate sufficient mental capital for solving problems, which manifests as judgment. Although this growth has its merit, we have implicitly accepted it as the norm and denied the fact that it is possible to be exceptional in our twenties.

Yet it is practically possible to build cognitive capital and seek experience so that the energy and enthusiasm of youth are met with some of the insight and judgment of age. Reading good books and exposing oneself to challenges is a good start. It is not a given that everyone will become wiser with age anyway; deliberate pursuit of insight and experience remains necessary.

The education we receive in school is just one piece of this puzzle. A degree is simply one tool among many and not the final solution to living life. Why then do we stop trying to learn and improve once we graduate? When we come to terms with the fact that what we need to be impactful and effective in life is not in school, we begin to appreciate more our role in our growth. I can decide to develop a certain set of competencies, insights, and experience, and go ahead and get it done; I can learn, change, and grow. All I need is to be aware of and use the utilities within me. I can be an old man inside a youth’s body.

I am, therefore, persuaded that speed is necessary in life. I find laissez-faire living and carefree stagnation to be detestable, and more so in myself. Perhaps I notice this hazy and lazy living so much in other people because I am willing to acknowledge it in myself first. There is an urgency and hunger which is very beautiful when I see it in young people. The drive and will to want to accomplish bigger things and to become better; that daring and beautifully insane spirit that births conviction and ambition.

Add that to the sheer energy and vibrancy of youth! Then top it up with insight and experience – the kind that does not just come with age but is pursued deliberately even in youth. Those three things make a fine arrowhead in an archer’s hand and a vessel of honor in the master’s service.

Stumbling forward

Even with all this optimism and ideas, the reality is that as we become the next and newest crop of adults, there’s going to be a lot of difficulty and pain. Everyone at this age encounters struggles with self and with the world, reshaping and remaking them into stranger versions of their former selves.

Yet the dreams of our childhoods and the nudge of our souls constantly badger us to reach higher and aim for more.

In such a situation, then, what do we respond to – the downward pull of our ever-changing and harshly punishing personal and social circumstances, or the upward call of our dreams? There is no definite answer, but Martin Luther King Jr. had something to say about the human response in such dilemmas, If you cannot fly, run; if you cannot run, walk; if you cannot walk, crawl; but by all means – keep moving forward.

Amidst the confusion and the clarity, the pain and the joy, the rising and the falling, that is one thing I have promised myself I shall always do – keep moving forward.

In a journey as challenging yet important as the one we’re on, I have found it necessary to have empathy and patience for myself and other people. I will often have to negotiate with myself to find an amicable way of navigating the pain and meeting the demands for effort and discipline required of me. There can be a fine balance between asking much of myself and being gentle with myself.

We do not have to forget or tone down our childhood dreams to fit the realities of our present circumstances. I believe that we can learn to rediscover the our destinies and the purpose that we hold.

We can further recover our faith in the future and in human nature; the world may be a faulty and hellish place, but magnificent and inspiring things can happen here. Human nature is weak and ignorant, but men and women have risen above their base selves and lived impactful lives. It is our duty. We must attempt that too - to keep trudging ahead.

For young people who have set up their minds to live deliberately and be impactful, there cannot be failure, only opportunities for building foundations. I have had so much stumbling and falling in my twenties and yet I stopped regretting them because I realized that they are a necessary birth-pain for what is to come. We inevitably choose these ‘failures’ by choosing to take the high and difficult road.

Therefore, we are not falling short when we stumble. Instead, we are learning and building experience and judgment – we are beginning to live ahead of our age. When you see someone at twenty-seven showing the insight and experience of a forty-year-old, remember that they have had to throw their younger selves in the deep end and walk through fire multiple times.

That is how we learn to walk on coals and swim alongside the sharks – and that is what the 21st-century young person, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, should be made of.

Therefore, let us not be too quick to appear like we have figured out these things. Those of us who desire to be unlikely and live uncommonly, let us not begin to settle when the first brush of the waves begins to hit. The tumultuousness of the journey at this age is only the process of laying a foundation.

We do not wait until we are flagged off by society to begin doing what we must do. We take the time to read, learn, and understand the world, and then we begin to notice the niches that life is calling on us to fill, and we rise to the occasion and do it. And we do not punch like those who are not trained either; we move forward with insight – because we never stopped learning when we left school.

We never settle, and tone down on our ambitions – isn’t this settling that they tell us about a form of backing down? Isn’t it bowing to the pressure and vagaries of life too early, even before we have explored all that we are capable of - all that is possible? Isn’t it settling for less in life? Leaving the party too early before we’ve sampled the buffet?

We refuse to settle; we will dare today, and we will be daring when we're seventy.

But I must remember to remain grounded in knowledge and reality lest I begin to conflate pride and vanity for ambition. We who attempt difficult things, who shoot for higher than the average, do it not for ego, but for purpose and duty (well, perhaps a very tiny little bit for the ego). We understand that there are people who are counting on us to become what we out to for them to have a shot at life. We understand that life is Duty, and we rise to fulfill it.

We the new adults who refuse to tone down and settle on our dreams have chosen to remain proud of our journeys, despite the mistakes and the errors that happen. We have learned to forgive ourselves because we understand the enormity of the task that we have taken upon ourselves. We will not just let the years pass by as we lazily adult; instead, we shall take hold of the reigns of our destiny with courage and insight – we shall remember to live.

Why be hesitant and afraid? Why did I waste so much time doubting myself? Why do capable people look over their shoulders so much that they never have the time to do what they should? I have spent so much time worrying about what people will say that I never had the time to ask the important questions. To ask what if?

How much better the world would be if stupid people were not so confident in their ignorance and the intelligent ones so afraid to assert their values!

So, never again! No more self-doubt and self-sabotage! We who dare to see the world as it could be will wake up and show up – with humility, insight, and power of will, we shall do our duty!

Cheers to us, the New Adults!