The thing you were absolutely certain about at eighteen that you now find almost funny

[Ann]

A gentle thread about the confidence of youth. Tell us something you were completely, unshakeably certain of at eighteen, an opinion, a plan, a belief about yourself or the world, that you now look back on with something between fondness and disbelief

The interesting pattern is not that eighteen year olds are wrong, everyone expects that, it is the SPECIFIC flavour of certainty, the total absence of doubt about things that turned out to be completely wrong, and how strange it is to remember occupying a mind that certain

There is a kindness worth extending to your younger self here rather than pure mockery, because that certainty, however misplaced, was probably doing something useful at the time, giving you the confidence to try things a more doubtful older version of you might have talked yourself out of

So share the certainty, what actually happened instead, and the harder question, whether you miss having that kind of conviction at all even though you know now it was often built on nothing, because a life with zero certainty has its own costs too

[MondayMoan31]

Was completely certain I would never live anywhere near where I grew up, actively planned my whole identity around escaping it, moved back within five years and have been happily here for two decades, eighteen year old me would be baffled

[SpinorWave]

Certain I had my entire career mapped out with total precision, ended up in a field that did not even exist when I made the plan, the certainty was not wrong exactly, reality just had other ideas entirely

[Tracey]

The certainty giving you confidence to try things point is real, I would never have moved abroad alone at eighteen without believing with total conviction that it would obviously work out, the naivety was load bearing

[Tiger]

Naivety being load bearing is such a good way to put it, we mock our younger certainty but a fully informed eighteen year old might never leave the house, the ignorance of risk was doing useful work

[RomanReigns02]

Was certain a relationship at the time was permanent in a way that now makes me wince slightly, not because it ended badly, just because the CERTAINTY itself was so absolute about something inherently unknowable

[SortedBuilder]

Certain that a particular hobby would be my whole life and identity forever, barely think about it now, and the funny part is not that I was wrong, it is that I could not conceive of the version of me that would not care

[Jeffy]

Could not conceive of a future self who would not care is the exact flavour of eighteen year old certainty, the failure of imagination about your own change is the real story here, not the specific wrong belief

[Rapid Ava]

Do miss the conviction honestly, even knowing it was often baseless, there was a freedom in being that sure of things that a more doubtful adult version of me has never quite recovered

[Vector14]

Was certain money and status mattered enormously and have spent twenty years slowly unlearning that one specific certainty, still not fully unlearned if I am honest, some convictions take a lifetime to actually dissolve

[Blake_73]

The thread is really about the specific TEXTURE of youthful certainty, not just being wrong but being wrong with zero awareness that doubt was even an option, that particular flavour of confidence is gone for good and we are somehow both worse and better for it