I've noticed this is an age that marks a subtle but significant phase in our lives and in the lives of our similar-aged friends.

Throughout high school and university, we mostly moved in the same direction and reached the same milestones. We knew what others were also going through.

A few years out of school and it feels like this is the time when many of us are starting to make critical choices for ourselves, choices of the type that can lead us down different paths from those around us.

Some are starting over and going into the arts, others are getting their MBA. Some are receiving promotions and rapidly moving up in their organization, others are founding start-ups. Some are getting engaged and married, others are ending long term relationships. Some have purchased a place of their own, others have taken off for new cities and continents. Some seem to know exactly where they are going, others are lost.

As differences pile up, it can feel that those who understand us are of a diminishing number.

When two ships set sail from the same point, if their journeys differ by even a couple of degrees at the start, the further they go, the greater the distance that separates them.

Finding connection with those whose lives look different from our own requires that we go beyond the surface level differences of what we do and where we live and what we eat and what we do for entertainment. To find and regain connection, we have to, in spite of these differences, delve deeper until we meet on common human ground - to openly reveal what we fear, what we want, what we love - to show, that in truth, this is me.