o

n paper, it’s easy to define your 20s. The second

you turn 21, a plethora of rights fall into your lap,

allowing you to sign papers, have dominion, be

Someone—a significant player—in this world. You

earn your bachelor’s degree or declare you don’t

need it, move on to graduate school or plunge

headfirst into work. Your 20s welcome you to the

world of Adulting... which sometimes, you resist

offhand; other times, you embrace fully and

wholeheartedly; and most times, you love and

hate simultaneously.

( TEX T) Chinggay L abrador

. (P

ho

To) iS

ToCk.

You’re on the precipice of life

itself. Here’s how you can live it.

#ownYour20s:

How to Make tHis

Your Best DecaDe Yet

welcoMe to Your 20s.

Your entire life leads up to your 20s.

You don’t spend 17, 18, sometimes 20

years in school just for the fun of it.

Every summer spent perfecting your

pirouettes, practicing your pitches,

performing for your parents is meant

to instill discipline, perseverance,

and confidence—traits that may not

have made sense to you at 11, but will

pay off now.

You’ve finally come out of your

teens, climbing your way through all

the rookie mistakes with broken and

repaired relationships, and failed

and rebuilt expectations. The people

who matter have seen you oscillate

between darkness and light, riding on

hormonal highs and lows until you’ve

found a spot where you can feel safe,

even for just a few seconds.

You’re on that “next chapter” they’ve

been talking about all your life and

while you feel the tremendous poten-

tial of this moment, you wake up every

morning not really feeling any dif-

ferent, still reeling from the fresh

wounds and raw scars of your teens.

Your diploma, your ID, your bills tell

you you’re legit, but for every piece

of paper that guarantees your place

in the Real World is an article, a

think piece, a tweet that disparages

your generation.

take it as trial

anD error.

This is a time of contrasts, oppos-

ing voices from within and with-

out. If you can lift yourself above all

the noise, and detach yourself from

the ideals and expectations of your

former life (or lives), you can start

to see your 20s as a decade of end-

less beginnings and endings.

You are in peak health—your

body can recover and repair itself

from sucky hangovers, major life-

threatening illnesses, and heart-

break-induced pains in a snap. It

is a time of reinvention. If you can

teach yourself to be brave enough

to receive other people’s wisdom to

form your own judgments; if you can

humble yourself enough to see your

mistakes and repair them; if you can

understand that while actions have

consequences, forgiveness is always

an option; if you can look at your life

from a bird’s eye view rather than

through a microscope, you’ll see that

you are in a great position to insti-

gate change.

Your 20s award you with the free-

dom to see how it goes. You have the

prized advantage of time—to repair

the mishaps and the blows to your

ego (you can be sure they will be

there), to right the wrongs, to prac-

tice till you can live your best life

with your eyes closed.

68 Cosmopolitan • MAY 2017 WWW.COSMO.PH