For my 24th birthday, my friends and I went to dinner in Saratoga for all-you-can-eat sushi. On the car ride there, I was scrolling through my feed when I came across a post that hit me like a shot to the gut. 

A creator I follow – Noah Rollette – was reflecting on turning 24 as well. His post shared five takeaways from 23, all framed by a life that, frankly, looks like the kind I dream of but feel miles away from. 

I have a rule about admiring celebrity too deeply. I believe pedestals to be dangerous. Admiration is saved for those who earn it through a connection. For celebrities, that comes through a connection to their median. I admire Noah—not for status, but for substance. His content stands for things I value: community, health, fitness, and conscious entrepreneurship.

But in that moment, it stung. “This guy is the same age as me?”

My friend and I laughed at the absurdity of it – laughed at ourselves a little, too. Comparison is the thief of joy, they say. But at times, it feels impossible not to look at where you stack up on the ladder – especially if you’re an inherently competitive person. It’s your own journey, and you should compete with yourself every day. 

That’s the only competitor that matters. But how come I’m not there? Maybe it just isn’t going to happen for me. That’s not where he was at when he was 24.

I’ve found this to be a theme of your early twenties. You’re responsible for creating the life you want to live, and that responsibility can make you feel like you’re somehow behind. It’s an awkward stage where, for the most part, you’re building, growing, and evolving. 

At the same time, you see plenty of people your own age living these dream lifestyles, and social media only magnifies the dilemma.

“Your twenties are the best years of your life,” is what everyone tells you. Some kids dream of high school, some dream of their dream job, some dream of wives and kids. 

I’ve dreamt of all of those, but I romanticized my twenties. I just had this feeling that this was a magical time in life when the world would open up to you. 

There’d be nowhere you couldn’t go, nothing you couldn’t do. True freedom as an individual. You’d have enough money, and people wouldn’t be able to treat you like a kid anymore.

As I entered my twenties, I began to wake up to the responsibilities of adulthood. God—I gotta retire my parents and save for a house and pay my rent and tuition and taxes and insurance and utilities and credit cards and get a good job and stop taking money from my parents. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. 

That pressure leads you to look around at your friends who are out of college and on Wall Street making six figures. Ugh. I said I’d never sell my soul. But I want money. How do I make the goddamn money I want and still enjoy my career and have freedom to experience life and its many adventures? Is that just another pipe dream? Long shot? 

There’s a certain guilt you carry when you grow up. You realize what your existence has cost others. Perhaps it’s just the empathetic who feel this – and not the entitled. Still, I don’t believe this guilt is healthy. For me, a fair amount of this time has been spent with a pit in my stomach. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I expected some large, life-altering, catastrophic event. 

That existential dread – and perhaps emptiness – made me feel like the life I hoped for would get derailed.

But the other shoe never dropped.

Every year around my birthday, I have my own little existential crisis, and this year, as I waited for it to kick in, I instead woke up and knew: this was something I could no longer live with. Would any of these people whose work and lives I admire cower to fear of unknown? Courage is not the absence of fear, it is persistence despite it. 

Nothing irreparable has happened. We’ve all gotten through everything that has taken us to this point. It has all been cause and effect, the consequences of our own actions. 

The consequences of inaction have been more detrimental. From where I stand now, my best piece of advice is: take a deep breath, it is all going to work out. And be busy living. 

– Jackson Edwards