You know that TikTok trend that I am a little late to? The one that says in your twenties njaninjani, it is important that you njaninjani. I love it. For two reasons. As a freshly minted thirty-year-old, I have decided to put on unearned airs of superiority when speaking to uhmm, the youth! And secondly, I love both songs on the trend, Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac and Piano Man by Billy Joel, (told you I’m old). Anyway this brings me to my own version of the trend.
So…boys and girls, mostly girls, in your twenties, there will be…
A job
You will love that job so much, you will make it your entire life. You will learn new things about yourself and meet some of the best (and worst) people through it. Coming to work will feel like an adventure everyday.
It is important that you take up space in that job, and do your very best everyday, over extend yourself if you will. It is also important to leave when you start feeling like you are being taken for granted. No conversation will make people value you when they have already decided they do not.
A City
It will be loud. And chaotic. And the traffic will be unbearable. You will want to go back home .
It is important that you stay in the city for as long as is practically possible. Learn what you can from it. You don’t have to love it, but it will introduce you to independence, to friends, to opportunities, to regrets and to…
A Boy
He will love you, for what he knows love to be. But his love will not know the difference between adoration and ownership.
It is important that you exit before the ownership suffocates you.
Opportunities
Some big, some small, some really inconsequential. There will be opportunities for work, for school, for travel. Opportunities to be kind, to be patient, to stand up for somebody else, to make someone else laugh.
It is important that you take these opportunities, all of them.
A Friend
You will enjoy spending time together and will laugh at each other’s jokes. It will feel like genuine sisterhood. But every other day she will say something passive-aggressive.
It is important that you address this the first time it happens, because it does not stop.
Source: Ninthgrid
Grief
It will come to you as a child and only grow with time.
It is important that you think of it as your responsibility and not your enemy. It is important that you nurture it. On days it needs to be fed, nourish it with memories and tears. It is here, it is staying, it is yours to raise.
Fleeting Moments
Whether it’s the one time in years your mother lets you sit on her lap, the highway drive you take with your father to prove you are worthy of driving his car or the breathing of your puppy as he falls asleep in your lap.
It is important that you savour these fleeting seconds. Sure, they don’t mean much but there are simply moments that you do not get twice. Mothers get older and fathers die and puppies don’t stay puppies forever.
Clients
Sometimes the customer is not always right. Sometimes the customers is rude, abrasive and objectively wrong.
It is important that you highlight this to them. I promise you, losing the business of one ill-mannered person will not lead you to financial ruin.
Mistakes
Big. Small. Reversible. Unreversible.
It is important that you make them all! That is the beauty of your twenties.
These are the very context-free nuggets I picked up in my mildly colourful twenties. I wish I had more, but this is what we work with for now.
Until next week…
