Adults are all basic to some extent. Have you noticed that they ask young kids all the same questions? What’s your name? How old are you? How’s school? What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s your favorite color? What’s your favorite animal? The first three are easy peasy. They don’t require much thought at all. The others are a little bit trickier. At least they were for me. They required more contemplation than I was capable of providing at the time. I usually ended up saying the first thing that came to mind. Which was likely true in the moment but wasn’t true as a generalization.

If I was already extremely shy when conversing with other children my age, you can only imagine what it was like for me talking to adults. I was even intimidated talking to my parents’ friends. Not all of them. Some of them I was rather comfortable with—the ones that they were closest to—but up until 5th or 6th grade I was scared out of my wits. I didn’t know why adults would choose to talk to me. I was secretly hoping that they wouldn’t. But my hopes were always in vain. You’d think I would’ve caught on though. You’d think I would’ve been prepared to answer the same questions over and over again. But kids really aren’t that observant. It doesn’t occur to you that the conversation is so predictable that it would behoove you to formulate a stock answer to give. But kids don’t think like this. Awkward, demure adults think like this.

As kids the explanation for the nervousness we feel is, “I’m shy, so in-depth conversation scares me.” We don’t know what social anxiety is. We don’t think to ourselves, “man I hate small talk,” or “stop asking me so many questions!” or “why am I so damn awkward?” If we’re too terrified to talk, then we stop talking. We don’t stand there trying to think of an unconvincing excuse to dip from the conversation. We’re not tactful (or antisocial, depending on how you see it) like that because we haven’t developed those tools yet. Instead, if we’re feeling particularly brave we try to come up with the quickest answer to the questions, hoping that the faster you give an answer the faster someone will leave you alone.

Unfortunately that’s not how it works either. Adults are always prepared to ask followup questions. The first questions that they ask may not always be the only questions that they ask. It may not seem that way, but adults aren’t intentionally trying to frighten kids. Curiosity gets the better of them same as you. They’re trying to make a young kid feel welcome. They’re trying to get to know someone early. It’s interesting to some—seeing a child evolve, seeing how they mature and how they handle the world. It makes some people feel accomplished, proud, or encouraged seeing where someone started and seeing where they end up. Even if they were not directly involved in that child’s development. Some people do it for selfish reasons. They do it for bragging rights, especially if said child becomes famous. They want to be able to say that they’ve known this individual since before they blew up. Others do it because they genuinely care about the child, and some do it because they care about the parents.

For me, I pick up random facts about people out of pure curiosity. I do ask people questions because I want to get to know them. But it isn’t entirely intentional. The thousand followup questions are a result of my mind needing to know the answers to certain questions. Sometimes it feels like a subconscious response; a need to find out the complete story. My mind works in a certain way, craving certain tidbits of information. Such as how many siblings someone has, the number of cousins, the birth order—just generally how people relate to one another. I’m not trying to pry or make people uncomfortable by asking so many questions. But I can’t really help it. I’ve always been a curious kid. I’ve always asked questions—they might not’ve been directed at teachers or adults, but I always at least asked them internally. My shyness prevented me from asking these questions out loud when I was younger, but inquisitive minds don’t really change. If you’re inquisitive when you’re young, you’ll most likely be equally as inquisitive when you’re an adult. 

That was definitely true for me. In college, given more stimuli than I had been used to, my brain developed even further. I was a business and sociology double major. At the time, it made sense for what I had wanted to do. Long story short, after shifting my focus slightly a few different times I eventually settled on market research. I was interested in numbers and people and demographic trends. Marketing and sociology fit hand in hand. Business/marketing was the front end stuff. The information that I needed to understand how market trends worked. Sociology was the backend stuff. The background that I needed in order to understand people. However, I never ended up pursing that career path for various reasons. Maybe I’ll get into that some other time. Either way, it’s not a choice that I regret. It wasn’t for me, simple as that. It wasn’t what I wanted. It was merely what I thought I wanted.

I won’t say that college was a complete waste of money, I did learn some valuable lessons after all. But I will say that it’s not the only avenue towards attaining financial success. It’s not the only way to make money—despite what they say. This is certainly not true of every high school in existence, but it was certainly true of mine. My high school promoted the misconception that college was the only path towards success. I get it. Higher education brings prestige. And in certain fields higher education is the best way to earn more money. But the key word is certain (read that as not all). 

My school was a blue ribbon school that was consistently ranked in the top 25 public schools in Massachusetts. As such, the pressure and expectation was excessively high. Too high in fact. It was certainly not a place that helped me to develop self-confidence in the slightest. I was not and am not a dumb kid. I scored an 1870 on my SATs. But that wasn’t good enough. In that school, in that environment, sometimes a 2100 wasn’t even good enough. That’s insane. My pretty good score landed somewhere in the 85th percentile in the country, but for whatever reason it was still lacking. That’s not a culture that I would want to raise a kid in. That’s too much pressure, and it’s unnecessary and uncalled for. The only way a student would be satisfied in that type of environment is if they became the best of the best. Striving for greatness is not the same thing as trying to be the best. Trying to be the best will always lead to disappointment. There will always be someone smarter than you, there will always be someone better than you, richer than you, what have you. From an early age we were taught the cutthroat nature of the rat race. It’s a cruel, crude world out there. Treachery abounds enough as is, do we really need to encourage teenagers to let their competitiveness spiral out of control in an un-constructive way? I know I’d rather not. True, pressure does create diamonds, but pressure also creates explosions.

Higher education should challenge young adults to try and become a better version of themselves. That’s without question. That’s what we should all be striving for. To be great, to be incredible. To always be improving, to always be looking for better. We’re not looking to be mediocre and to stay mediocre. Being stagnant is detrimental to growth. As such we must have motivation, we must have drive to become better than what we are. Outside pressure is good. It builds us up and makes us stronger. But too much can break us. It can cause promising young students to lose confidence or to lose focus. We want our kids to grow, to progress, to make a positive impact on those around them. But we don’t want to push them too hard. Too much outside pressure can create lofty expectations, expectations that even the brightest minds cannot reach. Balance is necessary. Don’t push too hard or you may see bright minds extinguish. You may see apathy and disinterest. You may see burn out. You may see nihilism. Do not push so hard that you inadvertently smother the light. Once the light is extinguished it is much harder for it to reignite.

So although I believe higher education to be overpriced, I am still grateful for my experiences there. Some young adults are capable of being on their own after high school. Others aren’t ready until after college. And still others may need even more time to develop after that. I certainly did. Sure I built up tools along the way, but who I was as an 18-year-old was different from who I was as a 22-year-old, as a 26-year-old, and as a 30-year-old. The 18-year-old version of me could not have survived on his own. The 22-year-old could at least wipe his own ass without assistance, but needed roommates to bolster his financial situation. The 26-year-old thought that he had his shit together, but was ultimately miserable with his life trajectory. It was likely clear to everyone else, but unbeknownst to me, I had a lifetime of trauma to unpack. I had a lifetime’s worth of healing that I needed to seek. Without healing there was no hope or optimism for me. You can’t go through life running away from adversity, acting like your trauma doesn’t exist, or acting like everything is okay. Eventually all of that shit catches up to you. And I assure you, trying to sift through decades of pent-up despair is a hell of a lot harder than dealing with it one thing at a time. 

So until I sought out therapy, after I had turned 26, there was no upwards trajectory for me. Either I regressed or I moved laterally. Moving side to side instead of onwards and upwards. That my friends is not progress, that is stagnation. Stagnation is the worst thing that can happen to you at this stage in your life. In times of adversity the going may be tough, but there is better—you can see it clearly. You may not know how to get there, you may not know how to seek it, but you believe that things couldn’t possibly get worse. When you’re at your lowest, there’s nowhere to go but up. But when you stagnate, you trick yourself into believing that everything is fine. You believe that since things are fine, that what you have is good enough. You believe that there aren’t areas that need improvement. You’re comfortable with where you’re at, you’re good with the status quo. You get lazy, you get apathetic. You lose focus. You lose sight of your goals. Because you stalled out. You stopped moving. That dear reader, is the most dangerous outcome. You inadvertently locked yourself out of higher blessings. You capped your potential at what you thought was good enough. You saw that things could be worse, and you left it at that. But things could always be better! You can always be better. You can always be greater. You can always accomplish more. 

Understand that and believe it. You are always capable of more. You were beautifully and wonderfully created and given a certain set of tools. A set of tools unique to you. No one else has the same exact set as you. That means that there is a place in the world for you. There is a role set up specifically for you. You owe it to yourself to discover it, pursue it, and excel at it. Dream big! But also be realistic. Again, balance is key. You need balance in every area of your life. You can’t spend all your time having fun, but you also can’t spend all your time working. You can’t be emotional in every decision you make, sometimes you have to be logical. If you have too little drive you aren’t doing what is best for yourself, but if you have too much drive you oftentimes hurt those around you. Find a balance. Outside pressure can motivate you, but it can also overwhelm you. Take constructive criticism to heart if you think that it’s valid. If it’s not valid then don’t worry about it. You can’t please everybody. Some people will always be jealous, some people will always be haters. You can’t change them, but you can change yourself. 

That being said, none of us are finished products. We’re all still growing and learning. We’re all looking to become the best version of ourselves. The journey continues. The ending will come eventually. All living things must perish. But it’s up to you to write the middle. Live in the moment and live to the fullest. Make each hour, day, year, decade the greatest it can possibly be. Write your own legacy. Make a positive impact on yourself and those around you. Pursue greatness. You can do great things. You are incredible, you can be incredible, you can do incredible. Just keep dreaming, and striving for better. It is safe to say that the 30-year-old version of me is the best version of me (so far). But that’s not good enough—I won’t just sit on my laurels. I haven’t accomplished everything that I want to accomplish yet. And I never will. When I meet my goals, there will be new goals to come. That’s the only way to keep progressing: to get better at what you do and to continually set new goals. 2022 has shaped up to be a pretty good year so far, but 2023 will be even more breathtaking. I will always strive for better. Who I am today is not who I will be tomorrow. I can promise you that.

I’ve been working diligently at my craft, but above all things, I’ve been working on myself. That’s the biggest difference between who I am now and who I was ten years ago, fifteen years ago, twenty years ago. Previously, I did not have the mental fortitude to take constructive criticism and create a better me, nor did I have the awareness to work on myself preemptively. Ten years ago I was in a toxic relationship (this isn’t to say that I wasn’t at fault, so please don’t read it as such). I had been carrying around my baggage in a black trash bag for many years at that point. After twenty years of pent up trauma, the bag started to get heavy. I was no longer able to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders, so I started dragging the bag behind me as I inched forward in life. But at some point, the bag ripped! Spewing my shit everywhere for all to see. Don’t be that person. Don’t drag your bullshit behind you, leaving a trail of brokenness and despair. 

Take care of yourself! Resolve your issues early before they become bigger problems. Don’t let them snowball. Your mental and emotional health are vital to your well-being. If you get your mind right first, everything will follow. Be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. You owe it to your loved ones; your friends; those who look up to you; but most importantly you owe it to yourself. Be proud of who you are, be proud of what you’ve become. You’ve come a long way. Who you are now is not who you were as a toddler. If you still have the same mindset now as when you were a child you have plenty of growing up to do. As we get older, we’re given more responsibility because people trust in our ability, they believe in us. But more importantly, they’ve started to rely on us. We don’t think about it much—we often take it for granted—but someone putting their trust and belief in us is a leap of faith. Who’s to say that you won’t renege on your agreement or not follow through? They don’t actually know that, but they inherently accept that you will come through for them. They believe that you are fully capable of doing what they expect you to do. That’s not nothing, although we often overlook the significance of it. 

This added pressure is good for our growth. We have an obligation to do the right thing. To do the thing that’s expected of us. Oftentimes we’re more afraid of our parents’ disappointment than we are of their anger. Why is that? It’s because in letting them down, we also let ourselves down. We never verbalized it, we never really attributed that feeling to anything, but that’s what it comes down to. We knew what we were capable of, and we knew what we were supposed to do, but we didn’t do it. In not doing it, we failed to live up to our parents’ expectations of us, but they only placed those expectations on us because they thought that we could handle it. They didn’t just assume that we were capable, they knew that we were, because of how they raised us. As we grow older, we start to suppress the selfishness that we exhibited when we were younger. It comes with the territory of being an adult. The things that didn’t make sense to us before, have started to make sense to us now, because of what we’ve seen in life.

We started to look at things from an outside perspective. We realized how tough it was for our parents. It finally hit us that they were just learning on the job. They didn’t have all the answers. They didn’t know everything but they certainly knew more than we did. Now we know what it’s like to walk in their shoes. That’s a part of growing up. We were on the receiving end, but now we’re slowly approaching the giving end. It will be tough. We know that and we understand it. But life goes on. The cycle begins anew. 

We’re no longer kids answering adult questions. We’re the adults now. Everyone expects us to act like it. But at age 30 we’re likely not who we expected to be when we were looking ahead at age 5. I know I certainly am not. I never expected to be a writer, an artist, an aspiring author, a world builder. None of this was in the cards for me when I was that young. My answer to the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” had always been “I dunno,” or something that I thought people would like and respect. Something like an astronaut, or a scientist, or a doctor. Those were never honest answers. The fact was I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, but I knew that I wanted to be myself. That never wavered. That never changed. Sure I hit some rough patches. Sure I was deluded at times. Sure I was led astray at others. But eventually I found my way to where I needed to be, and I stayed true to myself. 

I’ve always walked to the beat of my own drum. That has never changed and it never will. At times in the past, I had tried to suppress certain aspects of my personality, hide certain interests. But that never worked out. It always found a way to rear its head. It always found a way to peek out and say, “this is me. I am a vital part of Justin’s psyche.” And that is really the only real way to live. Be who you want to be. Like what you like. Do what you want to do. Live the life you want. Live the life you think you deserve. Don’t be ashamed of something just because it’s not in the mainstream. You don’t have to like what other people like. You don’t have to do what other people do. There isn’t only one particular career path that you need to pursue. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” as the idiom goes. 

As a kid, I was more worried about what other people thought than I was about what I wanted or what I liked. I chose to give basic answers because my brain hadn’t developed to the level that it needed to be at, in certain aspects. My curiosity ran rampant, but my intuition and discernment were not advanced enough to follow the convoluted nature of my mind. It was easier to give a simple answer. It was easier to say the first thing that came to mind. It spared me the discomfort of telling an adult to, “let me think about it.” But if they had let me think, they likely wouldn’t have gotten a simple answer without a lot of back and forth. 

Sometimes my favorite color was red. Other times it was blue. For a while it was green. All of these answers proved to be accurate at certain times in my life. But these were all shallow answers. Not digging particularly deep. If we had dug deeper we would’ve come up with this: I like earth tones. An answer that nobody else has given. An odd answer coming from an odd person. But it’s true. It’s the root of it all. Yes, I like browns, beiges and greys. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t also like color. I just like colors that are deeper and richer. I prefer cooler colors. I like reds, blues, greens, purples, yellows, but I’m particular about the shade. Bright or pastel shades don’t do it for me. There couldn’t be many things worse than baby blue or cerulean! But something like a midnight green or an Egyptian blue? I can dig that! I’m somewhat OCD, we know this. It’s not debilitating but it’s there regardless. But we never would’ve known any of this early on. I just didn’t think as hard as a kid. Not for lack of trying, but rather for lack of capability.

Likewise, I was incapable of verbalizing my favorite animal. To be honest, it’s kind of a shitty question. In biology class they teach us basic taxonomy. We have that little rhyme that teaches us different classifications such as kingdom, phylum, class, order. What do adults actually mean when they ask you what your favorite animal is? Do they mean domesticated animals specifically? Do they mean mammals? Reptiles? Birds? Fish? Do insects count? How about single-celled organisms? What do you mean? That was the question I always asked myself. What do you mean? What can I choose? Sometimes my answer was dog, sometimes it was cat, horse, or snake. I honestly didn’t know, because it’s not exactly the best question. But I was thinking too far in depth. This wasn’t the purpose of the question whatsoever.

But as kids we didn’t know that. We weren’t able to process to that extent. And that’s perfectly fine. Our brains were still developing, as were our people skills and our ability to discern and cogitate. It’s a part of growing up. Our brain capacity slowly catches up to the level of our inquisitiveness. As kids we always asked a thousand questions. What’s this mean? Who is that? How does this work? But there were some things that we just weren’t able to verbalize. I always wanted to know what was meant when people asked me about my favorite things. Give me a list to choose from! There are too many options! 

But questions like these weren’t meant to be thought about in so much depth. As a five-year-old, that’s not what’s expected of you. These questions are icebreakers. Ways of getting to know you. Nothing more, nothing less. The answer you give is not as important as the conversation that you have. It didn’t matter that it made me uncomfortable. I had to learn to socialize and talk to my elders somehow. It didn’t matter what answer I gave. What mattered was that it got me thinking. And that was a better lesson than I could’ve learned anywhere else. Your brain is a tool, a weapon, a defense. Those who think deeply thrive in high pressure situations. Those who think deeply are able to problem solve. As kids we may not have the words to verbalize our concerns. But we have the semblance of profundity building. It’s our duty to keep feeding it and nurturing it. Encircling it in an environment that allows it to flourish. Keep thinking. Keep asking questions, but in doing so don’t lose sight of yourself. Be authentic.