Twenty-Five Things I’ve Learned Before Turning Twenty-Five

By Emily Rolson

Hitting the quarter-century mark is undoubtedly a milestone – a scary one. At one point in history, twenty-five was considered ‘mid-life’. My own parents were married, had careers, owned a home and were expecting me at this age. But the longer people are living, the longer this limbo of ‘not-quite­­-adulthood’ stretches.

The era of being a twenty-something has long been considered an era for navigation. It brings anxiety to many, myself included. The internet in loaded with articles citing this phenomenon of twenty-somethings fearing, well, everything. I think a lot of that fear comes from the fact that, generally, our twenties are the first time everyone in our age group ‘scatters’ rather than files into one of a few categories.

We all go through primary or elementary school. And then you all funnel from that to high school. Then most people go on to some sort of post-secondary education or training. You’re in this petri dish of human existence for so long, forced to constantly be around people your age who are largely experiencing the same routines as you. You spend these first eighteen(ish) years of your life following a checklist. But one day the checklist ends. The gates open, and you all run for your lives.

Some people, like my mum and dad, go right into parenthood. Some people, like my younger cousin, go right into an apprenticeship and then a career. Some people, like me, find themselves lost without the structure of school and forced community. All of this to say, we spend so much of our time seeing not only what people did before us, but what other people roughly our age are doing now. We wonder: am I normal? Should I be doing something more like what she’s doing? Am I behind where I should be? We feel we must make every right decision now, or we’re doomed forever.

I read somewhere once that we should break our time up into less overwhelming chunks. I’ve decided to divide mine into quarters because while I’ve never been one for society-imposed milestones, twenty-five does feel like a big deal. And with this quarter ending, I am going to share twenty-five things I’ve learned before hitting the halfway mark to fifty (yikes).

I want to preface this by clarifying that I am not writing this from any kind of high horse. I work on accepting and making peace with these twenty-five lessons all the time.

1.     Your circle will get smaller, and that’s okay. The pandemic has certainly exacerbated the feeling of isolation and has made many of us feel separated. Anyone who, like me, graduated during the pandemic went from being surrounded by community to living in a world where we either work remotely or work then go straight home. But after graduation is when the real work begins, and we all begin to outgrow people and places as we move into new phases of life. We can’t take everything with us into every chapter: we wouldn’t have room for what’s to come.

2.     Keep paper trails of everything. People suck, and any time you try to bring complaints or issues past initial roadblocks, people will want your receipts. Most things are still an uphill battle, even when you’re right.

3.     When you move out, buy a tool kit. You can learn how to do anything on YouTube.  You’d be amazed at how handy and independent you’ll have to become when you move out, roommates or not.

4.     You are the main character of your plotline, but not the book. Everyone is going through their own problems. This can be easily forgotten because we only experience life from our own perspective. Sometimes the way people behave and things they say really have nothing to do with you, which isn’t an excuse to allow people to treat you poorly, but empathy can be key to moving on from painful situations. Empathy is powerful.

5.     As you get older, there will be times when you are raising your parents. But that doesn’t make them bad parents. They’re people, like everyone else.

6.     You’re allowed to get angry. Being angry is a sign that you have boundaries. That being said, turn your anger into something constructive. It can be easy to let it control you, but that solves nothing.

7.     Healing isn’t linear. It’s also lonely. But you only need yourself, and maybe a good therapist. We’re all stronger than we give ourselves credit for.

8.     Most people need therapy. And if society would stop viewing that as a bad thing, and if it were more accessible, the world would likely be a much better place.

9.     You don’t have to be good at everything you enjoy doing. In a capitalist society, we’ve been conditioned to think about how we can profit from our hobbies. If it doesn’t make you money and doesn’t directly contribute directly to society’s functioning, then why do it? But you enjoying it is the why. I like painting, and while my mother insists on hanging my ‘works’ around her house, I don’t expect to be opening a gallery anytime soon.

10.  You cannot love someone into loving you back. A lesson I have personally learned the hard way.

11.  Pick your hills to die on wisely. Part of maturing is knowing when to pick your battles. While this is something I am still working on, I preserve my oxygen for fires that are most important to me. This has largely been whittled down to three main ‘hills’: 1) Being pro-choice, 2) Being in favour of minority rights (#Blacklivesmatter), and 3) Being in favour of Taylor Swift in all situations.

12.  The bad things don’t last forever, but neither do the good things. Don’t take good things away from yourself by second-guessing someone’s intentions once it’s over.

13.  If I had to give things up (movies, music, TV shows, books etc.) every time an artist, creator or author said something ignorant, I would be left with very little.

14.  Most of the history we’re taught in school is, quite simply, not correct. I spent a considerable amount of time in undergrad unlearning what I had ‘learned’ through elementary school and high school.

15.  Your dreams and your goals can change, and it doesn’t make you a quitter. This is something I struggle with.

16.  Post-grad depression is real and alarmingly common. This is another one of my main struggles.

17.   You can choose to trust people’s words, but always believe their actions.

18.   No response is a response. And that goes for your silence as well. Sometimes there’s just nothing left to say.

19. Ask your parents questions. They lived an entire life before you came along. You may think you know them, but I can guarantee there are some interesting tidbits in there somewhere. It took me twenty-four years to learn that my dad met Steven Spielberg and Danny Glover in an elevator once when he was working in L.A. It also took me twenty-four years to learn that my dad, at one point, worked in L.A.

20.   Your minors aren’t printed on your actual degree. Much to my disappointment.

21.   Denying yourself the chance to grieve or the validity of your right to grieve will only make the pain worse and the healing process longer. Another lesson I have learned the hard way, time and time again.

22.   The only way out is through.

23.   Taking a break doesn’t make you a bad ally or a bad feminist. You can’t fight the good fight if you’re exhausted all the time. We didn’t create the world we live in. These corrupt, unbalanced, broken systems existed long before our time and constantly being aware or being checked into the news isn’t healthy. You can still be a feminist and opt-in for a night of Love Island instead of a documentary. You can still be an anti-racist and read your romance novel rather than The New Yorker’s latest article on police brutality. You can still be knowledgeable and concerned about environmental issues and get your drink in a plastic cup from Starbucks in a pandemic. These issues have never been about a few people doing everything. It’s about everyone doing what they can, where they can and when they can.

24.   It’s more important to have someone’s respect than it is to have their love.

25.   Turning twenty-five means something different for women. When you are younger, they (everyone older than you) seem envious of your youth, telling you to enjoy these years. Then, suddenly, twenty-five approaches and there’s this idea that by thirty you need to be settled. That leaves us with five years in which to scramble and accomplish this. But with the life expectancy for women exceeding the eighty-year threshold, the notion that we must figure everything out in less than half that time and then live out that exact life, never daring to start over or choose something else for the rest of our days, is outdated and damaging. People find their dream careers, their ideal partners, and their passions at any time in life. To not have everything by thirty honestly seems ideal to me because if I did have everything done, what the hell would I do with the rest of my life? To be seventy-five years old and not have grown in any way since age thirty seems like a tragedy.