Last week, I attended my first day of meditation class, during which I made friends with a woman called Joanna. With our yoga mats two feet apart, Joanna talked about how her forehead occasionally aches after meditation, and I shared how I remember embarrassing moments in the middle of sessions. She’s been a vegetarian for several years, and as a newcomer to the dietary practice, I was in sore need of advice. Joanna gave me recommendations for vegetarian restaurants in downtown — one of which, to my surprise, is only five minutes from where I live. She mentioned the marketing agency she founded with her husband eight years ago.

I remarked how, at 20, eight years was nearly half my lifetime. I told her I was 20. Her head fell forward as if her mouth dropped open (I wouldn’t know for sure, since we had our masks on). Joanna is 40 years old, and at twice my age, she didn’t expect to find someone so young trying to become a certified meditation instructor.

Seeing reactions like Joanna’s has become common to me. Often, my age gap put me in rooms where I was the youngest person. People in my drawing class were working adults in the computer graphics industry. People in my Tai chi class were aunties and uncles who have practiced the martial arts for over a decade. And people in my meditation course are apparently successful entrepreneurs.

Over the past few years, I’ve tried many different extracurriculars and majors, and I’ve given up on many. I have seriously considered majoring in political science, economics, environmental science, journalism, and computer science — just to name a few. When I was in high school, my mother would constantly complain about the speed at which I would pick up and drop an extracurricular.

I was a jumbled mess without a clue as to who I was. But through the mess, I now know the difference between when I love an activity, and when I just love the feeling of an accomplishment. This was important when I realized I wanted to take more STEM classes, not because I genuinely enjoy solving for the derivative of f(x), but because I just like a challenge. I also know the difference between a passion I genuinely identify with, and an activity other people have ascribed me to. When I told my friends about my plans to not enter the film industry, they protested, “But you’re a filmmaker! You’ve always liked film.”

Joanna told me how she majored in fashion but somehow ended up in marketing, and was now entering a new turning point in her life. Often, after a hearty conversation with someone older than me, I can sense a tinge of regret. They would say something along the lines of, “I wish I did this when I was younger.”

Even as a 20-year-old, I fear my better years are slipping away. When I saw a dentist about teeth alignment last year, she said most of her patients are pretty young, and I retorted, “I’m only 19.” In Chinese calligraphy class, Ms. Liu would make sure to patronize me every class — it’s never too late to learn! These days, as I practice the splits and see meager improvement in my flexibility, a persistent voice in my head whispers, “You’re too old for this.”

“Well, I’m 40 years old and have about 30 years left to live, which means I’ve got 30 years to learn new things,” Joanna said to me. With a single sentence, she disarmed every one of those naysayers.

It’s nerve-wracking at any age, for anyone, to try something new. I recall having a conversation with a friend about how we had dug holes for ourselves — a career of filmmaking for me and art for her — and that we’d be severely behind if we started anything new again. At that time, we were about to graduate from high school. We were only 17. It’s unfortunate that teenagers can convince themselves they shouldn’t do anything risky. It’s unfortunate that age is ever used as an excuse to kill a desire.

As well as age, there are other concerns we face when considering whether to try something new. For instance, when we confront the decision to leave a major we’ve worked towards for two years, it’s easy to cave to effort justification. “I’ve devoted so much time to this already that I might as well stay.” Likewise, when working adults are met with the choice to end a career of several years and start something brand-new, remaining in the status quo seems more comfortable. However, during these wavering moments, I’m reminded of Carl Sagan’s words in describing our pale blue dot of a planet: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it…every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines… lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

If Earth is just a mote of dust, then human beings like me are inconsequential, and our everyday concerns seem all the more frivolous. The pressure to abide by the norm is lower than we think, and we have the freedom to fulfill our hopes, wishes, and aspirations. If we want to completely upend our identity, invite new curiosities into our lives, and build ourselves anew, we should, like Joanna, feel uninhibited. Our lives can — and in my opinion, should — look like a complete mess.

Dani Zhang is a Communications Sophomore. She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.