Hailey Pan

I just turned 20 about a month ago! Normally, I don't think too much of my birthdays; they're mostly a nice excuse to celebrate. But this birthday felt different, despite it not being one of the "milestone birthdays" like 18 or 21.

I feel a lot of pressure entering this new decade of my life. We're told that our twenties are when we define who we are — our values, habits, personality. It's also when we set the foundation for how the rest of our life will be — our career, relationships, community. I feel the need to do everything in my power now to ensure that I'm setting the trajectory future me would want.

Yet this need is not what worries me the most. What I'm most afraid of about turning 20 is the fact that I will inevitably become more specific. My world narrows the more solidified my values become, the deeper I dig myself down a certain career path, the smaller my friend circle becomes. I'm scared that as I grow older, I'll settle into these things that will have become so familiar. I'll stop looking for the "next" thing — the next idea to explore, the next skill to learn, the next person to befriend. I'll lose that childish wonder of seeking out new experiences.

I recently encountered the phrase "world-expanding" through a blog my friend shared with me. It means exactly what it sounds like — when you discover something you didn't even know was possible, it feels like the world has been filled with that many more possibilities.

I wanted to share some of my own "world-expanding" moments to realize this idea. Words fall short in capturing the full range of emotion of these memories, but I'll do my best:

One of the most vivid times I felt my world expanding was near the end of my freshman year of high school, when I still had no idea what passions I would pursue. You should come check out the Robotics Team interest meeting! my friend said. I can relive what followed exactly as it happened: being in Mr. Haldeman's chemistry class, students scattered across five or six round tables, sitting in the back left and bursting with excitement. The projector started to play the "about FRC" video, and as I watched hundred-pound robots dash across the field and clamber up and down the game pieces I felt a sensation course through my body. The idea of high school students being able to build that was something I didn't even know was possible.

I felt something similar being a starry-eyed prefrosh, just dropped off at Kresge Lawn for CPW (MIT's event for admitted students). Watching clusters of prefrosh adorned with their CPW badges drifting to and fro, I felt the nervousness of knowing no one but also the pull of curiosity. With no agenda, I wandered toward the first thing that caught my eye: a professor showing bright orange sunspots through a telescope. Another prefrosh was there too, and we struck up conversation, got lunch, and hit up various free food events together. I felt The Infinite (pun intended) possibilities of spending the next four years surrounded by opportunities like these and people like her.

That same rush came back to me the first time I took a plane myself, flying to Boston for MIT pre-orientation. My heart was racing and my headphones were in, music loud enough to match the adrenaline. The mere fact that I was navigating the airport alone was incredibly empowering, especially since it was usually my dad navigating, making the decisions on behalf of the family as dads do. It was such a small moment, but that taste of autonomy made the world feel larger.

I noticed that I haven't felt this feeling — the wonderment of knowing that the world has expanded — to the same extent as I did previously. Meanwhile, my life has only grown more abundant with novelty — starting a relationship, traveling all along the east coast to different hackathons, living in and exploring 3 new cities, talking to incredible people who are students, writers, unicorn founders, scientists and policymakers. Not to mention the age of AI we're living in.

There is no shortage of magic for that childish wonder to thrive. So why don't I feel it? Have I been so exposed to these experiences that they've become ordinary? So accessible now that I take them for granted? When was the last time I truly felt in awe of something?

It worries me that wonder is slipping away. I think the pressure of needing to experience all these things — of solidifying who I'm supposed to become in my twenties — is the very thing that keeps me from feeling that childish wonder to its fullest. Instead of allowing myself to explore freely, the responsibility of "figuring it out" looms over me. In the back of my mind, there is always another thing I should be working on, another person I should be meeting, another opportunity I should be taking.

Still, I don't believe wonder ever truly leaves us. It's just been buried under layers of responsibility, stress, and expectations. My inner child is still there — I just need to give it space to breathe.

I'm making a commitment to myself to 1) keep seeking world-expanding moments, but more importantly, 2) actively create space for wonder to thrive in them. What this looks like:

giving myself permission to waste time. I'd like to schedule days where I have no TODO list and the full ability to be bored. A few weekends ago in Seattle, with nothing better to do, I wandered into a Barnes & Noble on my own for the first time in years. I bought a book on a whim, and that reignited my love for reading, which is something I (embarrassingly) haven't done consistently since middle school.
doing less. I have a tendency to get so invested in things that I overcommit myself, which eventually turns everything into an optimization game. When first starting AppDev@MIT, a club I founded, I had all these ideas I wanted to pursue. But by splitting my time across so many projects, we ended up with messy codebases and half-baked products. Over the summer, though, a few members and I decided to go all in on the one project we were most excited about, and that brought us to our first successful launch with hundreds of users.
noticing wonder as it's happening. I've been using Day One to record moments, ideas, and learnings that feel world-expanding. Living in SF, for example, has been conducive to many new conversations, particularly on what makes certain work meaningful and what is worth learning today in anticipation of the future. Hearing these perspectives gives me that I didn't even know this way of living/thinking was possible feeling, and I want to make sure I take note of them.

If I can create even a small space for my inner child to grow, I think that feeling I so want to hold onto will show itself. Maybe growing up doesn't mean that the world gets smaller — maybe it just means I have to put in more effort to notice how big it still is.