Youthful Life: X

The 20s are all about creating the world you want. If you want the world to be the want you it, the you, yourself have to make it that way. Be the person who says something; be the one who does something; be the one who is something. You have to be. No one else. The world on changes if we change and do better. We have to try harder. Do a little bit more. Go that extra mile. Change does not occur unless we are the ones to enact it. Cosmogonies are stories of world making - write your own.   *Instead of telling about my time with Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie, I thought I would share would you the piece I wrote for my journalism on her.   Creating the World You Want An interview with Chimamanda Ngozi-Adichie - By Joseph Oteng “Yoga, peppermint tea, chocolate twice a day, reading books, and natural hair YouTube videos,” Chimamanda joked as the secrets to finding peace in your life. Chimamanda is an accomplished writer, activist, and public speaker known for her July 2009 T...

The 20s are all about family. College is where your understanding of what family means changes. You have the chance to choose who you let in your life. You have a say in who you are connected to. You decide who gets to know all the parts of you. Chosen family is oh so very important, but the family that you're part of by nature of birth can often still have this uncanny impact on you. No matter how hard you try, you will always forever be linked to your brothers and sisters. Brothers and sisters. People who share my DNA, but what more? We're inherently similar but fundamentally different at the same time. People who look like me, who have shared many akin experiences, and subscribe to the same set of beliefs that I do. Cain and Abel, Moses and Aaron, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his brothers - Christian Biblical siblings (my inner religion major is having a field day) all of who's destinies were linked. I have always known that my relationship with my siblings was rar...

The 20s are all about surviving your most difficult days. It is a real wonder how we make it through some of the things that we endure. Every single day we are challenged by obstacles, tasks, and people. There's so much to do and so little time to do it. Sometimes it seems like the world asks too much of us. People want or need to much of us. We make mistakes; we say the wrong things; and we fail. We fall. We lose. We break down. But that's the way the world works, you survive. You do what you have to to be okay. You do just enough to make it through. You get shipwrecked but eventually someone saves you or you save yourself. "Courage, dear heart" - C.S. Lewis   One of my all-time favorite icebreaker questions is "if you were on a desert island what three items could you not live without?" People are always surprised my answer because it's not what you usually expect. Often times people say quite superficial things or they go to the extremes of wh...

The 20s are all about embracing uncertainty. Society grooms us to always be planning our next steps. We're supposed to be preparing for the future, prepping our next move and crouching to be ready to pounce. If you don't know what you're going to be doing five or ten years life, your life is apparently a mess. I'm here to tell you that I don't know what I want to do tomorrow much less next week or next year even. That's too damn real. It's okay to not know. Stop and read that again - I'll wait. It's time to change mapmakers. It's time to chart your own path, in your own time. It's time to become your own cartographer.   The first time I ever heard the word cartographer was in the context of this infamous level of the smash hit first-person shooter Halo: Combat Evolved that came out in 2001 (right in the childhood). I never really processed fully what it meant to be a map-maker. Maps have always just seemed to be there. Remember the days w...

The 20s are all about being happy where you are. Sometimes happiness can come as simply as choosing to be so. Sometimes things aren't as complicated as we make them. Sometimes people aren't the dastardly dark monsters we make them out to be. Sometimes we're not so complicated. In fact, many a times we make our lives a little bit harder than they have to be. Every once in a while you just let it all go. Be where you are when you're there. You're closer to practically perfect then you might think.  There's something to be said about experiencing emotion. It's something that makes us wholeheartedly human. It's daily reminder of our humanity. It's our imperfection. It's our flaw. It's our vulnerability. Don't get me wrong, it's not a bad thing. It's truly important and it's what makes us so complicated. Sometimes you want to turn off your emotions, just flip a switch and not have to feel it all constantly. That would save you...