🕒 What I Wish I Knew at Twenty

Chat history

You said:

I had a student who once asked me, “What do you know now that you wish you knew when you were my age? The student was in his early 20s. How would you respond?

ChatGPT said:

That’s a profound question your student asked—one that every generation wrestles with. If I were in your place, I’d give an answer that’s honest, personal, and also usable for someone in their early 20s who is standing at the threshold of big life choices. Here are a few possible threads you could weave together:

1. On Time and Perspective

“I wish I had known how fast life moves. When you’re 20, you feel like you have endless time, but decades slip by quickly. That doesn’t mean you should rush—but it does mean you should be intentional about how you spend your time and who you spend it with.”

2. On Failure and Risk

“I wish I had known that failing at something doesn’t ruin you—it shapes you. In my 20s, I avoided risks because I feared mistakes. What I see now is that failure is where most of the real learning happens. Don’t be reckless, but don’t play so safe that you miss out on growth.”

3. On Relationships

“I wish I had known that the people you surround yourself with matter even more than your career moves. Friends, mentors, and life partners shape your path in ways you can’t always see at the time. Invest in good people—they’ll outlast most jobs, possessions, and even ambitions.”

4. On Money and Meaning

“I wish I had understood sooner that money is just a tool, not the scoreboard of life. It matters for security, but after the basics, meaning comes from purpose and connection. Focus on building a life, not just a living.”

5. On Self-Kindness

“I wish I had learned earlier not to be so hard on myself. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll make choices that don’t turn out how you expect. That’s part of being human, not a sign you’re failing. Be as kind to yourself as you would be to a friend.”

That’s the kind of answer that lands with a student: part practical, part philosophical, with enough hindsight that they see why it matters.

Would you like me to shape this into a short “mentor’s letter” format—as if you wrote it to your student—so it could be something they’d keep and reread later?

You said:

My response was, “Nothing, because life is all about learning and if you take away learning, there isn’t much left.”

ChatGPT said:

That’s a wonderful response—elegant, humble, and deeply true. It carries two subtle but powerful messages for a student in their early 20s:

Learning is the essence of life.
You weren’t denying that you’d gained wisdom—you were showing that the process of discovery is the very thing that makes life meaningful. If you had known everything at 20, the richness of the journey would be gone.
Struggles and surprises aren’t mistakes, they’re the curriculum.
You reframed hardships and uncertainty as necessary teachers. For someone that age, who may be anxious about “figuring it all out,” it’s a freeing perspective: they don’t have to have all the answers yet.

If you’d like, I can polish your response into a form that works as a teachable one-liner and also as a longer reflection—something you might pass on in class, in writing, or even to family.

Would you like me to expand your reply into both a short maxim and a mentor’s reflection version?

Below top are AI generated photos with its projection of me (top right) followed by the original actual photo that I fed to ChatGPT to base its projection on (bottom left) and then an actual photo of me around the year 2000 (bottom right). You should try this.

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