i don’t know why, but that number feels a bit comical to me.

i’m not trying to make this another sulky essay. i love my life. but i guess i never imagined myself feeling so in-between, or feeling this weird underlying dissatisfaction at 22.

growing up, i thought being in my early twenties would mean living the life of my dreams. and in a lot of ways, i am. i moved thousands of miles away, living a completely different life from my friends and family back home. even though the homesickness hits me like a truck sometimes, there’s a deep comfort in knowing i’m living a life that is lived only by me, without someone in my ear telling me what to do or who to be.

but when i was little, 22 sounded so mature.

i thought by this age i’d have everything figured out, fully settled, and living out some grand peak of success. what my younger self couldn’t comprehend back then was the actual youngness of 22.

22 isn't the finish line. if anything, it's the first year the training wheels come off. it’s when you actually start living your life. it’s your intial years after being schooled and colleged for 21 straight years. those are the years you start implementing your life lessons, keeping your learnings close to your heart, and, most importantly, unlearning the rules that don’t serve you anymore.

for two decades, your life had a pre-written outline: finish this grade, take this test, move to the next grade. there was always another semester waiting. another exam. another milestone and then, almost overnight, the outline disappears. you’re suddenly expected to make decisions without a teacher or a syllabus telling you if you got an A.

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that sudden shift is jarring. the silence of having complete autonomy isn’t just freeing; it’s loud. and in that loudness, it becomes so easy to feel like you’re behind.

i notice it most when i find myself doomscrolling on tiktok at 1 am, watching someone my age living in a gorgeous penthouse apartment, making fuck-you money from five different income streams, seemingly having life all figured out before i've even decided what to cook for dinner.

then i close the app and look around my apartment. i'm living a reality that a younger version of me would've literally begged for. and yet there’s this panic whispering:

“are you doing enough?”

“are you wasting your life?”

lately, that phrase seems to follow me everywhere.

‘don’t waste your twenties!’

you hear it on the internet, on podcasts, from your well-wishers. eventually it becomes your inner voice. it starts playing on a loop in your own head. it’s crazy how easily a random internet narrative can convince you that if you aren’t wildly successful, settled, or changing the world by 22, you’re somehow failing at being young. especially when you’re one ambitious soul.

but how can you be behind if everyone is running toward a different life? feeling “behind” is a complete myth. to be behind, everyone would have to be running toward the exact same finish line. but we're not. some people are building companies. some are getting married. some are moving countries. some are trying to figure out who they even are.

i still believe you should spend your twenties working toward your dreams. i don't think this is an excuse to drift through life waiting for something to happen. but i also don't think panic has ever been a good compass. there's something beautiful about not knowing exactly where your life is going yet.

you get to figure out what kind of coffee you actually like. what kind of people you want around. what kind of life you want to build. what kind of work makes you lose track of time. what kind of mornings you want to wake up to.

for the first time, you're no longer following a curriculum someone else designed. and that’s a gift!!!

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everyone on the internet seems obsessed with becoming an "original thinker." the advice is everywhere: cultivate a unique perspective, notice patterns others miss, generate ideas no one else has ever had. i know this because i've spent a lot of time thinking and talking about original thinking myself. because in a world where it's so easy to outsource our thoughts, learning to think critically for yourself is genuinely valuable. i thought that kind of intellectual novelty was what i wanted, too.

but when i look at the actual advice inside the books i read or the substack essays i bookmark, i realize i’ve never actually cared about novelty as much. the writers and thinkers who change me aren't the ones inventing wild new concepts out of thin air. i don’t admire them simply because they have thoughts no one has ever had before. what i truly admire is their ability to articulate a feeling i’ve felt for a really long time but could never quite pin down. they don’t always invent new ideas. they seem to be speaking to me in the exact emotional cadence of a private feeling, giving shape to a vague ache or unfound emotions that already existed in my chest. if that is what originality is, then that's what i crave - not to be an inventor, but a translator.

yet for a long time, i kept framing this goal through the lens of intellectual prestige. i told myself i just wanted to be an "original thinker." the obvious answer for ‘why’ is that i love ideas. i love learning. i love connecting seemingly unrelated things and seeing the world through different lenses. but if i’m being truthful, there’s a much thornier motive underneath.

i want my thoughts to matter.

i want someone to pause for a moment because something i said or wrote made them see themselves or their life differently. i want the invisible things i notice to become visible to a stranger.

this longing feels uncomfortably close to wanting recognition. and maybe it is. we like to imagine that writing, creating, or thinking deeply comes from a purely selfless place, but expression has always carried a contradiction. you create because an idea is clamoring to get out. yet the moment you share it, you’re also hoping someone else receives it. those two desires don’t cancel each other out. they exist together.

i think every person carries around an inner world that no one else has access to. and if you ask me, there’s an existential loneliness in carrying it. we all walk around with observations we’ve never said aloud, emotions we’ve struggled to explain, connections that exist entirely in the dark behind our eyes. knowing that an entire way of experiencing the world could simply vanish with you unless you find the words for it - that's what makes expression feel so high-stakes.

expression isn’t valuable because it guarantees original ideas. it’s valuable because it gives shape to thoughts that would otherwise remain invisible. the moment you put an idea into words, something so private and so vulnerable becomes shareable and widely visible. something only you could experience suddenly becomes something another person can recognize inside themselves.

and i think that’s what i’ve been chasing all along.

not originality for its own sake, but the ability to translate an inner world into language that someone else can enter. the people we admire most aren’t towering original thinkers who stand above us; they’re interpreters. they pay close enough attention to notice what the rest of us are struggling to say, and they leave behind words that make us feel just a little less alone inside our own minds.

i’m curious: do you think originality comes from having new ideas, or from expressing familiar ones in a way that makes people feel seen? lmkk in the comments!!

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