What to know when you are 25(ish)

I may a year older than the article requires(I'ld like to think that the -ish takes care of that) but it resounded with me and hopefully it will you too.

Here are the things really worth caring about in your 20s.

Editor's note: This week, we're taking a look at some of the "Best of RELEVANTMagazine.com" from 2010. This article is our most read ever. Period. End of story. It clearly hit many of you (and us) right where you're at—approaching, at, or just past your late 20s, trying to figure out what it's all meant and where you go from here. Most of you really resonated with Shauna's thoughts, though some of you had quibbles with some of her emphases. But read it over again, and chime in below. The year might be almost over, but the conversation can keep going.

When you’re 25-ish, you’re old enough to know what kind of music you love, regardless of what your last boyfriend or roommate always used to play. You know how to walk in heels, how to tie a necktie, how to give a good toast at a wedding and how to make something for dinner. You don’t have to think much about skin care, home ownership or your retirement plan. Your life can look a lot of different ways when you’re 25: single, dating, engaged, married. You are working in dream jobs, pay-the-bills jobs and downright horrible jobs. You are young enough to believe that anything is possible, and you are old enough to make that belief a reality.

Job

Now is the time to figure out what kind of work you love to do. What are you good at? What makes you feel alive? What do you dream about? You can go back to school now, switch directions entirely. You can work for almost nothing, or live in another country, or volunteer long hours for something that moves you. There will be a time when finances and schedules make this a little trickier, so do it now. Try it, apply for it, get up and do it.

When I was 25, I was in my third job in as many years—all in the same area at a church, but the responsibilities were different each time. I was frustrated at the end of the third year because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do next. I didn’t feel like I’d found my place yet. I met with my boss, who was in his 50s. I told him how anxious I was about finding the one perfect job for me, and quick. He asked me how old I was, and when I told him I was 25, he told me that I couldn’t complain to him about finding the right job until I was 32. In his opinion, it takes about 10 years after college to find the right fit, and anyone who finds it earlier than that is just plain lucky. So use every bit of your 10 years: try things, take classes, start over.

Relationships

Now is also the time to get serious about relationships. And “serious” might mean walking away from the ones that don’t give you everything you need. Some of the most life-shaping decisions you make in this season will be about walking away from good-enough, in search of can’t-live-without. One of the only truly devastating mistakes you can make in this season is staying with the wrong person even though you know he or she is the wrong person. It’s not fair to that person, and it’s not fair to you.

Counseling

Twenty-five is also a great time to start counseling, if you haven’t already, and it might be a good round two of counseling if it’s been a while. You might have just enough space from your parents to start digging around your childhood a little bit. Unravel the knots that keep you from living a healthy whole life, and do it now, before any more time passes.

Church

Twenty-five is the perfect time to get involved in a church you love, no matter how different it is from the one you were a part of growing up. Be patient and prayerful, and decide that you’re going to be a person who grows, who seeks your own faith, who lives with intention. Set your alarm on Sunday mornings, no matter how late you were out on Saturday night. It will be dreadful at first, and then after a few weeks, you’ll find that you like it, that the pattern of it fills up something inside you.

Don't get stuck

This is the thing: when you start to hit 28 or 30, everything starts to divide, and you can see very clearly two kinds of people: on one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find God and themselves and their deep dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. And then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. They mean to find a church, they mean to develop honest, intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in kind of an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than they were when they graduated college.

Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?”

Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.

Taken from Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist Copyright © 2010. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Teaching about life

You know you are attending a very atypical class when on the first day of class the teacher tells you that you are here, in school, to be happy.

Children full of life, is an award winning documentary about how a a fourth grade class learns about human compassion and life in general from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. This they do through notebook letters penned and read by three students during each homeroom session. The letters are simple but honest and students are invited to respond to these letters.

I understand it is a challenge for teachers and students alike to do this in Singapore, but something can still be done. Perhaps a start could be changing Pastoral Care periods to sharing of letters like these. In so doing, students can not only learn to speak in front of an audience but also the effective use of english as a medium a tell a story. If there is something lacking in the Singapore Education System , it is the mindless pursuit of ever better paper qualifications for yourself and in the process forget that the world does not spin about you alone. The power of empathy , the ability to think of others before yourself, gets relegated to a place of lesser importance. How then are we able to progress as a society if everyone thinks only of him or herself? When can we call ourselves a truly gracious society?

However, the impetus does not lie with teachers alone. Each every one of us, be it parents, cousins, nephews, brothers, sisters and mentors alike can help by inculcating sound values and ensuring that selfish behaviour is not condoned.

learning and learning

know the principles. ask why. apply.

Setting things right

I had worn out my violin shoulder rest's rubber pads and this caused them to not be able to properly secure the violin. This was noticed by my violin teacher and knowing the poor student that I am, kindly advised me to just get the rubber pads. Apparently, they sold them - one of those little nick knacks of knowledge you carefully tuck away in the undulating folds of the hippocampus. To make full use of my trip I decided to visit the new Synwin branch at Marina Square and pick up a pair of earphones along the way. I got the items and went back to try installing the rubber pads.

The whole experience was mildly therapeutic. The peeling away of the old rubber pads which were on the brink of disintegration and then the wriggling of the almost-too-tight rubber pads to replace them. 4 repetitions later, the shoulder rest looked almost as good as new. It has been serving me since my very first lesson some 2 years ago. The replacement done, I tried them on the violin and they fit perfectly.Goodness knows why I procrastinated in replacing them till today.

And yet, there are just some things that can't be store-bought to make things right again. These are the things, I fear, that really need mending.

如果旋律是灵魂， 词就是躯体。

去铸造躯体是个磨人的过程。是辛苦的快乐着。
一个躯体的价值最终是要给灵魂一个适合他它的位置。

让它用全新的生命去挥洒它的一切，去用生命替别人说话。
所以词赋予躯体也给予生命。

所以要当一个铸体人。并不简单。

Today

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we Love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

by Jalaluddin Rumi

Music and passion

I think something truly amazing happens when you listen to music.

Like many, I am guilty of zoning out when listening to classical music but when you understand what the music is trying to convey, the piece takes on a whole new meaning. This probably explains why a piece which you might not have liked at first becomes one of your favourite piece the more you practice. You simply understood more of it.

If there is something I've learnt of life it is this - that we are afraid of that which we do not understand.

Ok with the preamble over,enjoy the 20 min talk! It is worth every single minute,I assure you.