My Lessons After College

I think the 20s is, symbolically, the groundbreaking of anyone’s adult life. Yes, we all learn a lot of things while we are students but, I believe, no amount of theoretical studies could fully prepare us for life as an adult. As students we accumulate a lot of skills to use for our future “dream” jobs but our jobs is only a part, if not a small part, of our lives. Life, as it has reminded me over and over again, is much more than the mundane.

Now, I am not an expert in the topic of things-you-will-learn-during-your-20s. As a disclaimer, this is not a Tuesdays-with-Morrie-ish kind of article. I am not about to give you the secrets to a happy third decade of your life. What I am about to share are a few things I learned during that time, things that makes me who I am now.

The power to decide is about as fearsome as it is exciting. For as long as we can remember, we have been making decisions. When you were a kid and someone gave you a candy, what you did with it – ate it right away, pocketed it for a later time or gave it to someone else - was a decision. Decisions were not exactly new during my 20s but decisions with lifelong consequences was a different story.

I remember the first time I realized how being an “adult” was. There was freedom. Freedom from the pressures given by an institution that dictates who I will be 4 or 5 years from a certain time, who I currently am thru a series of prerequisites taken and not taken and whether I was good enough thru a system of feedback majorly dependent on examinations. I loved it for the sheer possibility of being able to solely decide and dictate who I will be a day, a month or a year from a certain time.  But after getting used to this freedom and finding myself having disjoint pieces of plans and some blurred vision of a future 3 years after graduating, I started longing for the same things I loathed – the curriculum, the program, the tests.

Life as an “adult” was a life run by decisions. You decide where you want to go and you decide how you’ll get there. Your friends and family could tell you what they think is right or wrong but ultimately, what you, yourself, will take as right or wrong will also be your decision. No one can directly tell you if you’re on the right track to your dreams but what you will use as your gauge will also be yours to decide.

What is essential is invisible to the eye. I’ve heard somewhere that traveling is good for the soul. Maybe it’s because you’re out of your comfort zone or because you gain a different perspective as you try to get to know a new culture or because of the simple fact you get to see a new place that is not part of your everyday world. Whatever it is, I firmly believe that traveling transforms people, especially traveling abroad.

The last time I was out of the country due to work was when I was 25. Out of all my out-of-the-country experiences, this was the “grandest” as this was the farthest and the longest I have been away from home. I traveled to Germany alone on an almost 14-hour trip inclusive of the connecting flights, waiting time, getting lost and catching trains.

I remember as I was leaving the country, I had no qualms. I was just excited, confident on my “traveling” abilities. However, the moment I reached the place I was going to stay in for 2 months, I suddenly found myself crying. Without any means to contact my non-techie parents - no load, no skype, no YMs - and without a friend physically present to talk to, the thought of being miles away from home with a 6-hour time difference and lots of oceans in between that I wouldn’t be able to cross even if I wanted to, I wanted to go home.

I may have not consciously realized it back then but I knew this was a defining moment in my life. This was the time I realized that no amount of money could compensate for the loss of not being able to spend quality time with your loved ones. Time, particularly time spent with people who matter in my life, was more essential than any material thing.

Love is the fuel that will make us go on. At the risk of sounding negative, let me say, life is a series of routines. We wake up, take a bath, commute to work, go to work, work for - give and take - 8 hours, commute from work, get ready to sleep and then, wake up again the next day. This happens for majority of our days, 5 to 6 days a week for 52 weeks in a year. I’m not really the suicidal type but if we just look at what happens in our days and realize that this is what majorly composes what we do with our life, what is the point of living then? These were the thoughts I had when I was in my late 20s. Initially, I viewed the question as a rhetorical one, but eventually, I had my answer.

If we are going to look at life as the series of events we do day in and day out, then, there is really no point in living. But, this is not why we live. We live because of the love that surrounds us – the love that we receive and the love that we give. Without love, everything is pointless. We don’t work because of working per se, we work because we love to provide to the people we love. We don’t wake up for the sole purpose of waking up, we wake up and stand up from our beds because we know that what we will do is something that will benefit our loved ones, directly or indirectly. Love is what propels us to move. It is the reason why we continue to live – the physical breathe-in-the-air kind of living as well as the earning-money kind of living. 

Its been10 years since I graduated from college and transitioned over to the “real world”. In that decade, and at one point during that time, I started to wear a lot of hats - a taxpayer, a commuter, a driver, a Frisbee enthusiast, a breadwinner, a wife, a tita, a cook, a student, an engineer, a developer, a jetsetter, a Japanese culture addict, etc. I suddenly found myself needing to fulfill a number of responsibilities that it wasn’t exactly hard to loose myself.

Now, it is not my goal for you to adapt the things I learned and take it as your own truth. My simple desire in writing this is to challenge you to look at the things life is teaching you and use it to define who you are. We will be a lot of things in our life – some, at one point after another and some, all at once – but these “things” is not who you are. Do not let life define you. Instead, define what your life is going to be. Get to know who you really are by knowing the principles you believe in and the things you hold firm in your heart.