The biggest luxury life affords young people is the room to make mistakes. The older you grow, the smaller the room to make mistakes becomes.
When you are young you can spend recklessly, date bad boys or bad girls, skip a few classes, miss an examination, drink all the liquor in a bar and all the silly things that people do in college. You can do all this but you will notice that as you advance, the room for slip-ups diminishes.
There are basic mistakes that we can charge to youthful indiscretions as long as you are careful enough not to trip and die prematurely. The old wisdom-everything in moderation, excess is ruinous-comes in handy. So, whatever habit you pick, you have to manage it. It is easy to switch from a social alcohol consumer to an incorrigible alcoholic. And once you are hooked, it is impossible to quit; the trick is to never get in in the first place.
Another set of mistakes you have the luxury of is the career moves you will make. In your 20s, you can quit jobs you don’t like. You also can try your hand in business and not care too much about being burnt in process. This is a learning curve that that places you at a better place your peers who may choose to sail safely or who never leave the harbour at all.
Youth gives you time to try and fail until you find what works. The older you grow, the more responsibility that you have that will tie you down. Once we marry or join a committed relationship, we tend to start being cautious and our potential gets trapped in the process.
You can’t risk much when you have dependents. You also can’t risk much if age is catching up with you.
So, feel free to make mistakes in your early 20s. Life after 25 becomes harsher with little, if any, room to see your dreams come to reality.