As I’m nearing the age of a quarter century I feel myself getting wiser. Maybe it’s nothing but an allusion I’ve created in my highly entropic brain and I’m completely kidding myself, but I’m going to go with just getting wiser. I’m maturing like a fine wine, which is ironic because I’m pretty sure that the at least 60% of me that’s supposed to be water is actually wine.

1. Where & Who You Came From Matter

Gareth Williams / Flickr

I say this one first because it’s one of the biggest realizations I’ve happened upon since moving (half way across the country) away from home a few years ago. I’ve never been much of a family gal, I tend to find comfort in being alone with my own thoughts and spending more time on my future family (i.e. My fiancé, my golden retriever, and our future-and-still-hypothetical children) than my current family. I have always had much love for my family, but I wanted to get out, wanted to get away. Having my own experiences and seeing things on my own was important to me. Now that I have done both, I realize that my heart and the core of my self will always be tied to my home state and my family who still live there. I also have a much better appreciation for the role that family plays in raising the next generations. Not only do I sincerely want my family to play an integral role in my children’s life, I need them to. With that said, I’m not quite ready to move back home yet. I’ve got a few more years of aimless wandering to do before I move home to continue the family lineage, but I will one day.

 2. Sometimes Hard Work Doesn’t Pay Off

normalityrelief / Flickr

To those of us in our generation who pay attention, we’ve heard it before: Young folk feel an unprecedented amount of entitlement yet are all lazy and deserve just the opposite. Well I’m here to inform those who keep preaching to us that it’s no longer just about how much or how hard you work. With rising global populations, technological advancement, and the declining value of a college education, our generation is being pigeon-holed between a rock and a hard place where we haven’t quite discovered an escape route yet. While we’re working on that, why don’t you older folk worry about how to deal with all the baby boomers and the social security that us young folk are paying but will likely never see.

 3. Money is Not a Matter of Quantity, But Quality

Pictures of Money / Flickr

While it would be great to have mass amounts of money (I’ll be buying my regular lottery ticket this weekend), the reality is that most of us will just never have it. When you accept this reality, you start to value both your and other people’s money a lot more, putting more thought into what you want that money to buy. I’m a proponent of buying experiences rather than items. Before my fiancé was my fiancé, we traveled to our hearts content and took 7 years to buy a ring. The bulk of people couldn’t understand our motives, but we understood them perfectly.

What revelations have you discovered with age? Share your wisdom with us below!

 Additional Images: Pexels

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