why 26 is the perfect age
i was at a friend’s party and we were talking about moving abroad. a couple of tangential topics came up. this friend had mentioned that she was afraid of feeling lonely, moving away from family and friends, and creating a new life from scratch again. we had just met, but these fears and feelings are universal. i understood what she meant, and i’m sure she understood what i meant too.
i’m moving in a couple of months and i had been thinking about it for a while. i am very attached to my life in Singapore, you see, the comfort of being not just a call away, but minutes away from the people who have known me at my worst, best, and almost every single, difficult and ecstatic moment in between. i could be absolutely shattered or furious about something, but it would all go away once i was in the company of people who saw me and heard me. i am very attached to all the physical comforts too: fresh laundry and home cooked meals regularly, and accessible, reliable transport that i know at the back of my hand. these comforts created a safe foundation which fulfilled every basic need that i had (and more), and they allowed me to pursue whatever i wanted without worrying about the mundane chores of daily life. at the same time, i know that worrying about my daily life, as privileged as this sounds, is necessary for me to become a real adult. in my mind, being an adult requires some struggle—paying bills, budgeting for food, getting groceries, cleaning up after myself to name a few. i felt that, maybe, i was not living a “real” life.
anyway, i digress. we were talking about moving abroad and all the fears that came with it. as we talked, i put into words some realisations that i gathered only over the past few months: 26 is the perfect age.
26 is when:
you learn how to be a daughter. you start being aware of your parents’ struggles, you start to see their lives beyond the context of your parent-child relationship. they grow, and become humans in their own right. you start to understand how they were brought up, how that translates into how you were brought up, and you begin to reconcile them. you may forgive them for long-held grudges, or, conversely, even harbour new grievances for certain traits that you have inherited. whatever it is, it is a complex process of unraveling and detangling of deep-seated parental dynamics that you never had the opportunity (or capacity) to as a younger child who was likely preoccupied with only your world. at 26, your world expands. you start thinking about who you are in context of who your parents are, too. this knowledge anchors your relationship with home and family, and serve as a guiding light in a big move.
you learn which friends you want to surround yourself with. the friends you have kept around you so far are the ones you choose to keep around. without the parameters (or constraints) of school, your friends are the one you see day after day, birthday after birthday, heartbreak after heartbreak, because you want to. old friends and new friends alike. when you make new friends, you know who you want to keep around you, and you keep finding the ones who you align with. not because you have to see them in class at 7am the next day, but because you want to make time and space for them in your life. you choose, and are chosen, again and again. when you move abroad, you know who you want to seek out and keep—just as you have done all those times before.
you learn how you want to spend your time. you have been working for a few years, you have found your footing (however shaky that may feel sometimes), and you have your hobbies. you know, to some extent, what you enjoy and what you don’t. you have the freedom and knowledge to pursue the things that you want without feeling completely lost or unsure all the time. moving abroad will be scary, but i believe (i have to!) these pursuits will shape and guide your new experiences, albeit in a different geographical environment.
…
an analogy that comes to mind is this: 26 is when you have your two feet on the ground but you’re nimble enough to move them. hopefully, you have formed some principles to live by, and they will ground you no matter where you are.
right now, i’m learning that 26 is the perfect age for me—despite the sobering awareness of my existence and mortality, of my own family’s mortality (especially my grandma whom i love more than anything)—it is the age when i do things because i want to, and because i can do them. no adult supervision, no consent forms to sign.
it is terrifying to feel beholden to the comfortable life that you have while in search of something bigger and—as silly as it sounds—not necessarily better. but you will probably learn a lot more about yourself and the world while you’re at it. in any case, 26 is also the perfect age because you have time to make mistakes, even if that means jumping into the daunting notion of starting from scratch. although, it never truly is from scratch.