10 Lessons at 28
I turned 28 today.
I don't have life figured out. If anything, I think I've become more aware of how little I know. But over the last year, these are a few lessons that have stayed with me.
1. Every unconventional life comes with a tax.
If you want to live differently, you'll pay for it somehow. Maybe it's uncertainty. Maybe it's judgment. Maybe it's disappointing people you love.
Society rewards conformity because it's predictable. The moment you step off that path, you inherit a bill.
The question isn't whether the tax exists—it's whether the life on the other side is worth paying for.
2. Don't half-ass the people you care about.
I've always been a low-maintenance friend.
I can go months without talking to someone, and then we'll grab lunch like nothing changed. Need a ride from the airport? Help moving a couch? Someone to celebrate with or vent to? I'm there.
But I've learned that not everyone experiences friendship that way. Some people need consistency, not just reliability.
More importantly, relationships require vulnerability. You have to open yourself up to people knowing full well that some won't reciprocate.
For a long time, I convinced myself that being "low maintenance" was enough. Sometimes it was. Sometimes it was just emotional laziness disguised as independence.
If someone matters to you, don't ration your effort to protect yourself from disappointment. Give the relationship your best. If they meet you there, you've found your people. If they don't, let them go knowing you showed up fully.
I'd rather be disappointed for caring too much than regret caring too little.
3. Delusional optimism is lonely—but complacency is worse.
Believing you're capable of something extraordinary requires faith in a version of yourself that doesn't exist yet.
Most people won't see it.
Some will think you're naive.
Ironically, the opposite can be just as dangerous. If everyone starts believing in you, don't mistake applause for arrival.
Stay wildly optimistic—but never confuse encouragement with accomplishment.
4. Religion may disappoint you. Wonder won't.
I've learned to separate institutions from awe.
You're a speck of dust in an unimaginably large universe, yet the odds of you existing at all are incomprehensibly small.
That's enough to keep me humble.
Whatever your beliefs, don't lose your sense of wonder.
5. Laughter carries truth further than anger ever will.
You can have the best message in the world, but if nobody wants to hear it, it won't matter.
Humor lowers defenses. Kindness opens doors.
People rarely remember the argument.
They remember how you made them feel.
6. Looks matter. Pretending they don't doesn't help anyone.
One of the biggest lies we tell ourselves is that appearance doesn't matter.
It does.
Not because beauty determines your worth, but because presentation changes how the world receives you.
For a long time, I hid behind dressing like I didn't care. It was easier to tell myself I look like this because I chose to than risk wondering if people simply didn't find me attractive.
I can't change everything about how I look.
But I can take pride in how I present myself.
That's enough.
7. Never let yesterday's impossible become today's ceiling.
There are moments in my life that once felt unimaginable.
Growing up in a refugee camp.
Going to Stanford.
Working with Fortune 500 companies.
Building a YC-backed startup.
Every one of those felt like the destination.
The danger is that once you've escaped your original circumstances, everything else starts to feel like playing with house money. You start thinking, I've already made it farther than anyone expected.
That's comforting.
It's also dangerous.
Yesterday's impossible can quietly become today's excuse to stop pushing.
I never want to forget the kid in the refugee camp. He's the reason I have perspective, gratitude, and resilience.
But I also can't let him lower the expectations I have for the man I've become.
You owe gratitude to your past.
You owe ambition to your future.
8. Kindness without wisdom becomes naivety.
I still believe selflessness is a virtue.
But good intentions don't exempt you from the way the world actually works.
There are incentives, power dynamics, and systems at play whether you acknowledge them or not.
You can be the kindest, most principled person in the room and still get taken advantage of if you refuse to see reality for what it is.
As virtuous and analytical as a rabbit may be, it's still prey in a jungle.
The goal isn't to become cynical.
It's to become aware.
I want my kindness to be a choice—not a vulnerability.
9. Self-awareness without action is its own kind of suffering.
One of the hardest places to be is knowing exactly what needs to change and still not having the courage, discipline, or emotional bandwidth to change it.
Those are the nights when it's 2 a.m., you're alone with your thoughts, and every insecurity suddenly has a microphone.
You replay your mistakes.
You question whether you're enough.
You wonder why you keep getting in your own way.
I've learned that the answer isn't to be harsher with yourself.
It's to be more intentional.
Most days, you're just laying bricks without seeing the house.
Give yourself enough grace to be unfinished—but not so much grace that you stop building.
10. There is no such thing as a self-made person.
The older I get, the less I believe in the myth of the "self-made" man.
We are the sum of thousands of people who came before us and stood beside us.
Every teacher who believed in us before we believed in ourselves.
Every mentor who took a chance on us.
Every friend who stayed.
Every parent who sacrificed more than we'll ever fully understand.
Every stranger who offered a kind word at exactly the right moment.
None of us arrives here alone.
As much as I hope to build things I'm proud of, I hope I become the kind of person others can lean on the way so many people have been there for me.
If I've accomplished anything worth celebrating, it belongs in part to every person who believed in me before I could fully believe in myself.
Thank you to everyone who has been part of my story.
I hope I can be part of someone else's.
Here's to 28.
May I spend less time trying to prove that I belong, and more time becoming someone worthy of the opportunities, the people, and the life I've been blessed with.