Finding Yourself at 21 vs. Redefining Yourself at 39

 Finding yourself and creating yourself can be one of the most overwhelming and often challenging things to do in life. Often, when we reach 18 or, at the latest, 21, we think we have everything figured out, but this is far from perfect. It’s the time when not only are we allowed to drive, but we also start our careers and are given our first taste of independence and freedom.  

Although being an adult is generalised, there are stark differences in the maturity of both. At 21, we are generally told to find ourselves as if we had actually misplaced our personality somewhere between college lectures and Instagram reels or forgotten it on a bookshelf.

At this age, it is the time to try to backpack, to flirt with veganism, join a poetry or book club; basically, do anything and everything. There is no clear sense of direction. It is at this age that we say yes to nervousness, no to stability, and we think that we have found ourselves after having visited a bookstore or listened to a motivating TED Talk. 

 

However, there is a huge twist to this, and that is far from reality. We are just at the beginning of our life drafts – nothing has been set in stone yet.

 

Fast forward to 39 years – this is the time when we are not trying to find ourselves anymore. It is a time when perhaps we have gained too much experience in life, career, and friendship. We just want to focus on redefining ourselves with more intention and less drama. 

 

At 21, change feels like a rebellion, but at 39, change feels like a quiet revolution – where we fight with boundaries and can unlearn certain behaviours, fight with tightened boundaries and have the courage and ability to disappoint the people whose attention we once desperately tried to seek. 

 

Being 21 is all about exploration, whereas at 30 it's all about curation. At 39, we are not finding a new self, we are making peace with the parts that we have kept and gently letting go of the parts that we don’t need. 

 

We no longer ask ourselves questions like “Who am I?”, we ask questions like “Does this version of me still fit?” or “Do I need to rewrite my story?”

 

At 21, we are starry-eyed with what the world has to offer us, but at 39, we are more self-aware - yet we continue to grow. We aren’t lost – we are just evolving. We no longer search for who we are. We are editing our lives – trimming the noise down and redefining what matters, and we are choosing peace over perfection.