26.

What happened to being 26 from an 18 year old's perspective?

I'm thinking back to the way I viewed people in their mid 20's when I was 18. There was a range of thought and emotion, mainly centered around a bit of anxiety because I was scared I wouldn't know how to get there. It's similar to the feeling of leaving elementary school to go to middle school and then leaving middle school to go to high school. You feel like you have no idea how to do what kids have done before you and then you're placed in that situation and you kind of just figure it out. No template, no specific guide, and I relate that to being 26 and reflecting on what that looked like from my 18 year old self. I didn't know what the following years of my life would look like, if I would amount to my dreams or fall into the traps that I feared most. Isn't it funny that as each year goes by the previous years slowly start to blend together to the point where you only vividly remember the last couple of years or so?

Life will make you perceive things as being important when they really aren't. What's the biggest comparison factor today? Money and fame. Money in the sense of how much you can show me you have, what your job is, what investments you have, if you own a home or not, what type of car you drive, blah, blah, blah. (mouthing that last part as I type it) Fame in the sense of how many people know you, how you're perceived on social media, if you're liked or not from a social scope, taking pictures with the goal of Instagram and Snapchat in mind rather than the moment in front of you. What is the moment in front of you? Real life, YOUR life; your next 24 hours, the skills YOU are working on, the people that you send little messages to or call or check in on, those people are real. We get caught up in what was rather than what is and that seems to prevent us from moving toward a future of our own. We get down on ourselves for not accomplishing something that was never a passion of ours to begin with. So you're not going to school to get a degree while others are, is that so bad? Or you're going to school to get a degree while others aren't, is that so bad? We tend to follow in groups and look at the masses. Wherever a group of people are going and whatever they're doing with their lives, we follow. There's a fear of reinventing ourselves because we don't know how we'd handle the judgement or criticism. Take social media as an example. We've made it so hard on ourselves to express our life or our passions that we don't even share our own content to social media anymore. We replicate "trends" or share stories because they expire rather than showcasing the life that were literally living.

26 is interesting. When I was 18 or 22 I remember thinking how scared I was to lose my years, that the closer I ended up to 30 the more I felt like I would lose my "good years." I've realized something, and I'm sure I'll continue to realize more; every year is the golden year. You're only "old" if you give in to the perceptions and patterns that our traditional society would want you to believe. It's the same with being 18 or 21 and someone saying that you're too "young". Don't take value away from the life that you're experiencing by constantly worrying about things that genuinely don't matter. And what matters vs. what doesn't? Anything that propels you to becoming a more thoughtful, more grateful, more motivated, and better all around person with your mental, physical, and emotional health seems to be something worth holding onto. If you have people, a job, a location, a lifestyle, or habits that damage those aspects of your life then why are they still important to you? We hold onto things strictly out of attachment not because they make our lives better. In a world where 3% of the population are employers while 97% are employees we've developed a system of living our lives to impress others. I learned this the hard way from 12 to 26. Because of this "employer vs employee" mindset, I lived most of my young teenage life forming my opinions to agree with people that I admired most, following trends because the masses followed them, and developing a judgmental mindset because of what I was told to be good and bad.

It's taken me years to figure out who Spencer Cook is and move away from the societal Spencer Cook, and it's been empowering. I get impatient all the time, I stress about finances, I do my best to continue innovating with my skillsets, and I mess up all the time and so yeah, I'm still working on myself, and to be quite honest.. I always will, that's life. However, it's refreshing to take a deep breath knowing that I'm not living my life according to anyone's plans or visions besides my own. There's not a single day that goes by where I don't think about the people who root for me, the relationships that are complex, deep, and REAL. Those are the people who have allowed me to step outside of my previous self to figure out a path that feels like my own. It's an ongoing journey that I'm excited for. I feel as young as I've ever felt, I feel healthy, I feel motivated, I feel passionate, and I feel grateful.

Here we go 26.