Project 24

A Letter to the Girl I’ll Be on Tuesday: Stop Optimizing, Start Living

To Cherish (Version 24.0),

By the time you read this, the calendar will have flipped. You will officially be twenty-four.

The earth will rotate, the Mumbai humidity will be exactly the same, and your coffee order won’t change. But inside your head? I know you. You are treating this birthday not like a celebration, but like a performance review where you showed up without the slide deck.

I am writing this to you from the final days of twenty-three a year where we spent a lot of time thinking, planning, and technically "succeeding," but emotionally feeling like we were buffering at 99%.

We need to talk about the elephant in the room. We need to talk about why you, a trained psychologist who knows exactly how the human mind works, are currently stuck in the mud.

The Burden of Being "The Girl With Potential"

Do you remember when we were 15? "Potential" was our favorite word. Teachers used it like a gold star. Cherish has potential. It felt like a promise that the world was waiting for us.

But somewhere along the way maybe during the Masters, maybe in the quiet lull of this part-time job "Potential" stopped feeling like a gift and started feeling like a debt.

Now, when people say, "You’re so capable," it doesn’t feel like praise. It feels like a threat. It hears like: Why haven't you cashed this in yet?

You are walking around with a winning lottery ticket in your pocket, terrified to go to the bank because you’re scared you might trip on the way. You are hoarding your potential because as long as you don't use it, you can't fail. As long as you don't pick a path, you can technically still be anything.

The Curse of the High-Functioning Brain

Here is the cruel joke of your intelligence, Cherish: You are too smart for your own good.

You suffer from the curse of self-awareness. You know the map. You can lecture anyone on Maslow’s Hierarchy or the steps of behavioral activation. You know that to get to Z, you have to do A, B, and C.

But because you are smart, you are also calculating the Opportunity Cost of "A" before you even put your shoes on.

The Sylvia Plath Effect

There is a famous passage by Sylvia Plath where she sees her life branching out like a fig tree. One fig is a husband and a happy home. Another is a famous poet. Another is a brilliant professor. She wants each and every one of them, but choosing one means losing all the rest. So she sits there, unable to decide, until the figs begin to rot and fall at her feet.

You are sitting under Sylvia Plath’s fig tree.

• Fig 1: The Family Business.

• Fig 2: The Radical Psychologist.

• Fig 3: The Creative Writer/Founder.

You want them all. But because you are a perfectionist, you are terrified that if you pick the Corporate fig, you’ll regret missing the Writer fig. You are paralyzed by the fear of choosing the wrong life. So instead of picking one and tasting it, you are sitting there, starving, watching all of them rot at your feet.

You think you are being careful. You think you are "strategizing." But let’s call it what it is: You are hiding.

Insight is Not a Cure

You keep waiting for a "compelling option" to strike you like lightning. You are waiting for the moment where you feel 100% sure.

But here is the data point you keep ignoring: Clarity comes from engagement, not thought.

You cannot think your way into a new life. You have to act your way into it.

You are sitting in your room, safe in your "privileged hell," trying to review the menu of life before you order. But life doesn't have Yelp reviews. You don't know if the soup is good until you spoon it into your mouth. You don't know if you're a great founder until you launch a messy, embarrassing product.

Your potential is not a savings account. It doesn't earn interest if you leave it alone. It depreciates.

The Birthday Mandate: Enough Thinking

So, here is my gift to you for your 24th birthday. It’s not a plan. It’s not a "vision board." It is a permission slip to be mediocre.

I am releasing you from the pressure to be "Excellent" immediately.

I am firing the "Optimizer" in your brain who needs to know the ROI of every single action.

Enough thinking.

The paralysis ends on Tuesday.

Pick a fig. Any fig. Even the shriveled one.

• Write the bad blog post.

• Apply for the scary job even if you aren't sure you want it.

• Start the project without a logo or a strategy.

You are terrified that you will waste your potential on the wrong thing. But the only way to truly waste your potential is to protect it so carefully that it never sees the sun.

You are 24. You are allowed to be a work in progress. You are allowed to build a cathedral and then realize you actually wanted to build a garden. That isn't failure; that's data.

So, please. For the love of God. Eat the damn fig.

Happy Birthday,

The Version of You Who Is Done Waiting.