impact
“I still don’t understand the play.”
“Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.”
I turned 25 recently, which sadly means that I’m no longer viable to date Leonardo Dicaprio (if I was ever an option to begin with). I also only have five years left to get into Forbes 30 under 30 (though I’m a great candidate for Forbes 30 under pressure).
25 feels like a huge milestone. It’s a quarter of a life (a generous assumption that I’ll live until I’m 100). It’s the midpoint of my 20s. It’s the age when my mother gave birth to me.
At 25, everyone says that my frontal lobe is supposed to develop, which should mean that everything in life will make sense.
I’m not sure that’s true.
I still make a ton of mistakes. I still enjoy being a dumbass. I don’t feel like I’m any more mature than I was a year ago, or five years ago for that matter. If anything, my outlook on life has become even less clear over the past year. I have a vague idea of what life will look like for the next 6 months, but anything beyond that is a gray haze.
Don’t get me wrong — I enjoy the uncertainty. As long as I’m healthy and happy (most of the time), I’m happy to just ride the wave and see where the tides take me.
However, I did spend a lot of the last week thinking: if so much of my life is uncertain and out of my control, what is in my control?
Someone asked me yesterday “Do you ever feel like you don’t actually want people to know you? Your writings say a lot about you.”
If you write on Medium/any other platform, you understand that sharing your writing publicly can make you feel very vulnerable. For me, to press publish means that I am carving a little bit of myself and leaving it on the interwebs for strangers to pick at. It’s scary — but being scared of something shouldn’t stop me from doing it anyway.
If anything, I’d like to be able to be even more vulnerable and honest. I read pieces from fellow writers (especially those on Journal Kita), and there is a level of candor that I wish I could achieve one day. Some pieces are so honest that I literally do a double take at how refreshingly candid they are, about their thoughts, their families, their heartbreaks, and their fears.
When you open up about yourself, people will naturally open up to you.
I’ve found that to be the case over and over again. The more vulnerable you are, the more people are willing to be vulnerable with you. I’ve had many encounters over the last year where I would be telling someone about my insecurities, and by the end of the night, we’d be talking about their darkest fears.
I don’t fear being known, I welcome it.
In a time where people become famous for being ungenuine alone, I’d like to come as I am and showcase my failures just as much as I showcase my achievements (if not more). Highlight my runs even when they’re not particularly fast. Publish my writing even when they’re far from perfect. Share the rejection letters, not just the acceptance letters.
I can’t control what I receive from the world. But I can decide what I want to give to the world. I can decide what impact I’d like to try to leave. That’s what I want to focus on this year.
I still want to try more things. I‘m sure I’ll still make mistakes. But I’ll also learn more; about myself, the people I love, strangers at the airport, about new places, new people, new experiences, success, failures, triumphs, heartbreaks.
And I’ll write about it all. Maybe it’s a tweet, maybe it’s a Medium post, maybe it’s a journal entry, maybe it’s a quick chat with a friend, maybe it’s a book.
I’ll start more conversations. I’ll share more about my thoughts, what I’m watching, what I’m reading, what I’m playing. The good, the bad, the great, the ugly, the mundane, the extraordinary.
I’ll give as much as I can — emotionally, financially, physically, spiritually — in the hopes that I leave a bigger impact on the world than I did last year.
But ‘impact’ for me isn’t about trying to change the whole world.
I’m not trying to move mountains, I’m trying to move someone to start reading. I’m not trying to start a running cult, I’m trying to get one person to lace up their shoes and do a 1-kilometer run. I’m not trying to get someone to write a novel, I’m trying to get someone to write a bit more than they would have otherwise.
I’m not trying to be famous and remembered by millions — I’m trying to be meaningful enough to slightly change one person’s life. If I can help someone read one more page/write one more word/run one more kilometer/watch one more movie than they would have otherwise, I’ll be happy.
I don’t know a concrete way to change someone’s life, or their behavior, or their habits. So the best thing I can do is to keep sharing the things I love doing, and maybe someone will ask me about them, or maybe they’ll feel comfortable to share the things that they love.
I may not know what I’ll be doing in the next year, or the next five years. I may not know what life has in store for me in the next few months. I may not know what will happen in the world in the next few weeks.
Maybe I’ll never get to see if I make it. Maybe I’ll never get anything in return for everything I give. Maybe I’ll never understand what life is supposed to mean, or whether it will all make sense.
But that doesn’t really matter. I just have to keep giving. I just have to keep telling stories.
And maybe it’ll make someone’s life just a little bit better.
And that will be enough.
Ending the piece with a short thank you to everyone who’s still around and all the new friends I’ve met over the last year. Grateful to know you and to have a chance to be close to you all.
You’ve all left an impact on me in one way or another — thank you for that.
Here’s to another year of good times with friends, both old and new.
