Home, Change, Chocolate Expectations, and the Liar

You know when you’re coming back home from a really long trip, the plane has landed, and you text “I’m here!” to that someone important enough in your life to come pick you up at the airport. Which, on the How Real Is Our Relationship Scale is slightly above picking up the tab at lunch and slightly below assisting on a cross-city move. To a 4th story apartment. Buzzing with nervous excitement, you’re barely able to restrain yourself from throwing off your seat belt and being That Guy who pretends he doesn’t understand English as he tries to cut in front of 15 rows while flustered flight attendants scold him over the loudspeaker. But as you fidget in your seat, the excitement begins to wane as your plane taxis for so long you worry the pilot accidentally took a wrong turn and is headed back to New Jersey. And then the plane finally stops and the pilot makes an announcement that this flight is fourth in line to deplane. And as you’re still debating to yourself whether or not “deplane” is actually a word, De Plane rolls slowly forward like they landed on a runway full of wet cement. Then finally the seat belt light disappears as excited travelers compete for the coveted award of Eat It! I Stood Up First. And as you stand in that awkward Close Encounter of the Plane Kind, where you’re half-crouching beneath the overhead compartment, straddling the side of a seat and your carry-on, the pilot comes on to tell you that the door is malfunctioning and a special crew is being sent from Newark to come fix it. A collective groan rises to the heavens. Then they finally get the door open and back in seat 105F you can see some dots of people looking like they are getting off the plane, but then you notice that every person in front of you is over 77 years old and has somehow fit several full-sized oak tables in the overhead compartment that they’re now trying to unwedge. Without much success. And there, straddling seat 105F, running your hands through your hair, clutching and unclutching your bag as you try desperately not to become the Unidentified Crazy Person who shows up on the 11 o’clock news, you begin to seriously lose hope that you’ll ever make it home. Yeah, unfortunately life in our 20s can feel the same way. Your plane has landed, you’re ready to get off and go home, but the de-plane-ing process takes 4–7 years. And once you get off you realize you’ve actually landed in the wrong town, and home is 2,321 miles due west. Sound depressing? Yeah, it kind of is. Let’s be honest. Because your 20s really aren’t about jumping off the plane and going back home. The life of a twentysomething sometimes is that of a nomad. Picking up your tent and continually traveling to locate the herd and test the soil so that you can find the right place to land, the right place to call home. Your 20s are not about finding home; your 20s are about finding the right place to build it.

Most twentysomethings have experienced a near decade of transition with more job and housing changes than a chameleon has colors. Change has been thrust on us like a blind date—we didn’t want it, but through the experience we learned something important. We’ve had to change, morph, become better and more resilient. The lack of a red carpet has forced us to find a different, better way to the party. It’s always been true that those who know how to change will win. If you master the Art of Change, I see YOU with a big grin, holding the trophy.

Everyone dives into a box of chocolates with expectations. High expectations. You don’t need to consult the snooty Chocolate Legend lying on the bottom of the box like it’s God’s Gift to Chocolate Lovers. I mean it’s chocolate. You don’t need instructions to consume chocolate. You’ve been mastering this your whole life. So you grab that first Round-Mound o’ Goodness your eyes behold and without hesitation, pop that bad boy in your mouth like a Mentos after eating garlic shrimp. “Ughhohmyuck!” you can barely get out of your mouth, along with pieces of what you’d later describe, during therapy, as a crunchy-raspberry-mint-liqueur-licorice-ball of anything but chocolate. How could chocolate do this to you? After all you’d been through together? You feel so cheated, so lied to. Life in our 20s can feel the same way. Who needs to consult that career counselor or coach? You’ve been doing life for 20-some years. You got it pretty well figured out. Then you take that first big bite of your 20s expecting awesome and are shocked when you’re left with a mouthful of atrocious instead. However, there’s always a risk for a mess when you go in expecting the magnificent. There’s always going to be imposters hiding among the incredible. But the box of chocolates will redeem itself. Always. Under one condition: you give it another chance.

Whenever you’re doing something worth doing, the Liar’s going to attack. Every. Single. Time. Who’s the Liar? The self-helpers might call it negative Self-Talk. The spiritual might call him Satan. He plays a filthy game. Because when you sit down to do your work, the Liar is going to try and stop you. And it won’t be a full frontal assault like an army storming the castle. No, it will be like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings. Sneaking up next to you, whispering in your ear a soft hiss of lies. Each lie poisoned with just enough truth that only after you take a bite do you realize it’s killing you. Even as I sit here and write this now, the Liar is whispering in my ear. “Who are you to write a book?” “Who are you to encourage people to stop me?” “You’re not as creative as ____________.” “Not as funny as _____________.” “Not as influential as ________ and especially not __________.” “Quit now before you embarrass yourself.” His lies unnerve me, but they have not stopped my forward movement. Because after too many years of listening to his voice, I’m better equipped now at shutting his mouth.

TWO WAYS TO SHUT THE LIAR’S MOUTH

1. Speak Directly to His Lies

Some days when the battle is fierce, I literally speak these phrases out loud. “Liar, you have not created one single thing in your entire miserable existence. How do you have any right, authority, or credibility to tell me how to do something you are incapable of doing yourself?” “You destroy. I’m building. You mock. I’m encouraging. You criticize. I’m creating.” Giving the Liar authority to speak truth into my life is as insane as letting a wrecking ball build my house.

2. Realize There’s Beauty in the Liar’s Game

Here’s the interesting thing about the Liar—when he starts babbling, you know you’re onto something important. When he starts talking, thank him. He just revealed to you that you’re on to something huge. Thank him, and then cut off his head. We must not let the Liar get his way like a snake suffocating its prey. Our calling, our children, and our purpose in this world—all depend on our ability to shut the Liar’s mouth. We have been given the authority to create and the Liar can’t take that away.