I turned thirty last September. I spent that entire day on a long flight on my way back to the States, secretly hoping one of the flight attendants would come by and leave a small note on my tray table, thanking me for choosing to fly with United on the day of my birth. That, of course, did not happen, so I think it’s safe to say it was the least glamorous birthday I ever had. And yet, I was at peace. I felt genuinely excited that day to bid adieu to my twenties and to start the fourth decade of my life. I felt content.
There were many, many great experiences in the last ten years. I made incredible friends, I finished school, I got a job doing what I like, I lived in incredible cities, I learned how to take more risks, I learned how to conquer some of my biggest fears, and I learned how to courageously face some of my deepest wounds. I was privileged to have these experiences.
But, there were some dark moments in there as well, filled with sadness, loneliness, confusion, and anxiety. I certainly knew those feelings were a rite of passage. Twenties, despite their glamorized portrayal in pop culture, are supposed to be full of ups and downs. Those ups and downs are allegedly what turns us into stronger and wiser adults.
At the same time, while I knew everyone else was experiencing similar feelings, I still felt that I wasn’t doing life correctly. There were so many changes happening each year, and I felt that I lacked the ability to control them and to preserve stability. Just as I would figure out one aspect of my existence, it felt as if the universe then did a full factory reset, throwing me into an entirely new configuration.
And so, I kept waiting for that “wisdom” to come. You know, the wisdom that everyone keeps telling you about. The one that suddenly hits you in the last few months of your twenties after you have overcome all these annoying hurdles. The one that suddenly bestows upon you this incredible talent to handle life and all the curve balls that it throws. The one that teaches you how to do life correctly.
The funny thing is that the “wisdom” did actually come. It just wasn’t what others told me it would be. In early 2020, my parents came to San Francisco for a visit. I distinctly remember telling my dad that I felt I was in the right place at the right time. I was feeling more comfortable at my job, I felt that I have grown into myself more, and that I was happy with who I have become. I was a little sad that I wasn’t able to leave the country because of my green card application, but I figured it was going to be a fun year nonetheless and that I would spend it with my close friends in the city.
Life had other plans though. The pandemic hit and everything changed. All of a sudden, I was in my cramped apartment all the time, day after day. My laptop and Google Hangouts became my life. Many friends moved away and disappeared, some of them very suddenly without having said goodbye. When I did see people, every conversation centered around the virus. I couldn’t see my family even if I wanted to because my immigration process would come to a full stop. I felt like I was in double quarantine. I felt I was no longer in the right place at the right time. It was all so surreal and so unbelievable.
I was fortunate enough that I didn’t lose anyone in my life to Covid and that all the people I loved could, for the most part, stay at home if they wanted. Which is why I didn’t understand why I felt so sad and frustrated. Everyone else was going through the same thing—some through far worse experiences and in far worse circumstances—and yet it felt as if everyone else had accepted this new normal and effortlessly adapted to its harsh conditions.
That obviously wasn’t true. Everyone struggled. One thing was certain though; I was refusing to accept that the world had changed. It took me a while to understand this, but I—like everyone else that year—was grieving. I was grieving the loss of my pre-pandemic life, I was grieving the loss of all the pre-pandemic rituals that I took for granted, and I was grieving the loss of the pre-pandemic time freely spent with the people I loved. And I was refusing to move on. I got stuck.
I am not mentioning this to complain about my objectively frivolous pandemic woes but to point out that the “wisdom” came with this experience. What I learned was that stability cannot ever be permanent. Change is inevitable, wherever you are in life, and no matter how many times you successfully handle the inherent volatility of our existence, you are not spared from one of the toughest weapons in life’s arsenal: unexpected loss.
That can be an unexpected loss of a loved one. It could also be losing your job. Or losing your apartment. Or moving away from your family. Or ending a longterm relationship. Cutting out a friend from your life, getting cut out from a friend’s life, losing your pre-pandemic routine, and so on. The list is endless.
While they differ in magnitude, all these experiences have one thing in common: loss that comes unexpectedly and brings on an intense—though not always acknowledged—grieving process. Where they start to diverge is the path that you choose after that unexpected change and after that unexpected loss.
If there is wisdom to be acquired in our twenties, it’s exactly this one and it’s one that I don’t think people ever talk about. We don’t enter our thirties suddenly equipped with wisdom to do life correctly and to handle all life’s challenges. What does happen, at least what I have come to realize, is that all of us go through unexpected changes and unexpected loss in our twenties. Some of us learn how to reweave our life stories during that loss, victoriously emerging wiser on the other side, while some of us get stuck.
My mom always tells me she didn’t believe the rumors of a potential war in Bosnia and Herzegovina back in 1992. She was 25 at the time, pregnant with me, spending time with her friends, and hearing through the grapevine what she thought were grossly exaggerated stories of an impending disaster coming. And, then—it actually happened.
I never understood what she meant when she said that the world she knew ceased to exist that day and that her perception of people permanently changed, even when the war eventually ended. But I get it now. My family was fortunate to have not lost any loved ones in the war, but they still experienced massive loss. They lost their identities. They lost their sense of safety. They lost their sense of trust. They lost their sense of optimism. And, most horrifyingly, they lost the future they envisioned for themselves.
I can only see now from this vantage point that collectively they went through an agonizing grieving process. My parents and many of their friends, probably due to the fact that they had young children, accepted the loss and eventually rewove their life stories. Many others got stuck, yearning for the pre-war times and endlessly trying to recreate the social fabric of Yugoslavia. But those days were gone.
Over the last ten years, people who I have witnessed do life the right way were those who, with each chapter of unexpected change and unexpected loss, fell apart and relatively quickly realized they had to reweave their life story. It’s an uncontrollable process, of course, because simply getting up one day and saying that you have decided to rewrite your life story is not going to do it. But their awareness of the loss they suffered, even when that loss is not a loved one or even a person, provided the light they needed to eventually pick up the pieces and move on.
Pop culture calls this skill resilience. Personally, I never liked that term and I rarely use it. Resilience, for me, conjures an image of an elastic object, of something that can be bent and deformed but ultimately returned to its initial shape. From what I have experienced and what I have seen in these last ten years, that is not the solution to processing loss and moving on. It’s quite the opposite. It’s falling apart, losing your initial shape, and then having the hope and the courage to rebuild yourself into a new shape. One with a new, rewoven story.
That, of course, does not sound nearly as sexy and empowering as resilience. It might even seem hopeless because it takes away the sense of agency our Western culture likes to glamorize. I personally find it very humbling. There is something almost freeing about this piece of wisdom, knowing that in the lack of predictability, there is absolutely nothing that I can do to prevent change.
I remember reading an interview with Robyn for Time Magazine, just after she had released Honey, describing her tumultuous few years of depression that inspired this incredible album. And she mentioned that after she lost her collaborator, her view of the world changed. It became far less stable for her. Though she doesn’t say it explicitly, I could tell that the word she was going for was softer. That softness comes through the imagery of honey and can be felt, almost tactually, in the album’s eponymous song.
I really loved that symbolism. Life is far softer, far more amorphous than we think. It can give and gift but it can take and steal as it pleases. At the same time, that’s what makes the periods of stability without these unexpected changes so precious and so special. I think that’s why I felt content the day I turned thirty. It wasn’t because life was objectively incredible. It also wasn’t because I had it all together. I was content because I realized there is no such thing as doing life correctly. With its honeylike softness, life will undoubtedly adopt many unexpected shapes, and the only correct thing I can do is to go with it. And appreciate every moment along the way.