22 vs. 32

Shortly after the holidays, I flew back to Chicago from Istanbul on a Sunday. There were a lot of emotions from saying goodbye to my family to the weight of the anticipated work day.

Naturally, while I was waiting for my luggage to arrive, my mind wandered off or rather it became hyper focused on my thoughts at that moment. These weren’t happy thoughts. They were the voices of my inner critic.

The critic was stirring up a fight. On one side we have my 22 year old self who is immature, naive and full of dumb hope, her ego is boundless and she thinks she has it all. In contrast to her, we have my 32 year old self who is confused, jaded, her hopes are fragmented and tainted, and her ego is bruised. You can guess the tension between the two.

Let’s move to the first thing I noticed when I landed in Chicago that Sunday. My 32 year old self felt defeated. She was grieving something. My inner critic took advantage of this insecure moment and interjected. She reminded me of how the 22 year old me felt when she first arrived in Chicago ten years ago. The 32 year old me couldn’t resist and started the comparison game. She saw the 22 year old me as someone fearless and visionary. Someone who takes what she wants and can allow herself to act on her dreams.

It was almost instantaneous with the words like defeat, grief and disappointment, my mind jumped to the conclusion that the 32 year old me was a loser. Nobody wants to brand themselves with that adjective so the 32 year old me tried to search for the reasons for my 22 year old self’s hopefulness. To count a few, she had just graduated college as a valedictorian and moved to the US. With an intelligent mind like hers, she would be making big dollars, have a job where she would feel important and people would listen to her ideas, because duh capitalism pays for your smarts. She had a best friend come with her, too, so she wouldn’t feel out of place, she’d have someone from her roots. She had an American boyfriend who she would marry eventually as he was madly in love with her. She had a good future waiting for her. Of course she would feel enthusiastic and hopeful about her arrival.

Now is the time to rationalize why 32 year old me felt like a loser. She didn’t have a job with big dollars, people didn’t pay for her smarts and they certainly didn’t care about what she brought to table. She married her boyfriend, but married life wasn’t as glamorous as she thought. She drifted apart with her best friend, they became strangers and she was thousands of miles away from family and loved ones. Of course the 32 year old me felt defeated, disappointed and jaded. It all made sense.

And for a long time, I think I saw my 22 year old self as an enemy, because it was impossible to replicate her perfect vision and the life she had envisioned for herself. Somehow not dreaming as grand as she did and not being as daring as she was, seemed like something losers would do. You know, mediocre people. But, I know now there’s no enemy here. I am thankful to my 22 year old self. Thanks to the brave but naive choices she had made, 32 year old me gained access to two different cultures, mastered fluency in English (no course can beat living in the culture), worked for foreign companies and became familiar with global work scene, travelled easily without having to go through visa applications, and maybe the most importantly for me, discovered that she was a writer. I’ve come to realize without the isolation and being removed from your familiar space, it’s harder to turn inward and observe. I discovered my love for writing because I took refuge in it. It saved me from the deep loneliness I felt at the initial years of my move to the US.

So perhaps, my 32 year old me doesn’t have it all, and yet she has something 22 year old me didn’t have: perspective. The lived experience is priceless as it’s necessary for clarity and context. It teaches one that life isn’t perfect and there’s always challenges to face and sacrifices to make, or my favorite from Walden: “Price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”