"Your 20’s are your ‘selfish’ years. It’s a decade to immerse yourself in every single thing possible. Be selfish with your time, and all the aspects of you. Tinker with shit, travel, explore, love a lot, love a little, and never touch the ground." Kyoko Escamilla

I'm turning 20 this week. The moments in my life now will no longer be told as "When I was a teen.." stories. I'm leaving those years behind and stepping fully into adulthood.

And this is the advice I get? Really?

I'm not saying it's entirely bad. I do think 20-somethings should travel and love and all that. But why do those things have to be done selfishly?

I shouldn't be surprised, I know. Most of the modern world encourages selfishness, whether you're a single 20-year-old or a married 28-year-old with two kids.

I get it. I get that sometimes people overcommit and need to intentionally create space for alone time. But that is not the same thing as being selfish.

Let me simplify it. Someone is describing your 20s to you on your 30th birthday. They say, "You were selfish in your 20s!" You might think "Great! That's exactly what I was advised to do and exactly what I aimed for."

But replace the word "selfish" with its actual definitions.

"You were concerned excessively with yourself in your 20s."

"You had no regard for others in your 20s."

"You had no concern for the needs or feelings of other people in your 20s."

Are we starting to see the problem? We're told to be selfish because we don't have a genuine understanding of what the word "selfish" actually means.

When we hear the word "selfish" in the context of the above advice given to 20-somethings, we immediately think of travel plans with friends and week long music festivals and money to spend solely on ourselves and fancy drinks on nights out in expensive new clothes.

When we hear the word "selfish" we think of a beautiful, free lifestyle. We've glamorized selfishness to the point where it's not only ok, it's encouraged and it's desirable. And that needs to stop.

Because there's nothing beautiful about disregarding the needs or feelings of others. There's nothing glamorous about being excessively concerned with yourself. It's not ok to walk through this life, or even a decade of it, thinking that the world revolves around you.

I get it. Everyone wants to travel and live and love and laugh before "real life" sets in. I hate to break it to you, but in that case, the joke's on us. By the time we're 20, real life has already set in.

Traveling and living and loving and laughing? That is real life. Yeah there's a bunch of other not-so-good stuff that's thrown into real life too, but if we handle it all selfishly?

Most of us handled things selfishly as teenagers simply because we didn’t know better. But we're adults now. We know better. And if you know better, then you do better.

You grow up and you realize that the world has never and will never revolve around you, that you don't know all the answers, that you will let yourself and others down, that you will need other people, and that you will need endless amounts of grace.

You will need second chances. And third and fourth and fifth and sixth chances. And if you find people who are willing to give you those chances, who are you, in turn, to give them your selfishness?

If your understanding of the word "selfish" is creating more space and time to take care of yourself, do that. Absolutely. Taking care of yourself and having alone time is so important.

But if your understanding of the word "selfish" is the true meaning of the word, disregarding the needs and feelings of others because you're only concerned with yourself? I hope you'll reconsider. For the sake of all those you will meet who will need your selflessness more than you could ever know.

So as my 20s rapidly approach, I refuse to accept the advice that tells me I should use my 20s as my selfish years. I refuse to accept any advice that ever tells me I should be self-centered enough to use the time I've been given on this earth as my time and absolutely no one else's. And I think you should too.

Because being selfish isn't equivalent to living a glamorous life. Being selfish is equivalent to wasting precious time.