I’m 25 years old, having just stepped over the threshold of that quarter-century milestone that scares so many of my peers (I’d be lying if I ever said that it didn’t worry me just a bit, too), a few months ago. I have my dream job…the one I confidently declared would indeed be mine at age eight. I graduated from a relatively well-ranked college, with a relatively versatile degree, and with very little debt accompanying my name. I have a good group of friends who I’ve met through my experiences in life and who have all helped me in some way or another to recognize my full potential. I have hobbies that keep me busy, ones that help me realize my passions and invigorate in me a sense of accomplishment and commitment that very few things can give me.
So, what’s the issue? It seems as if I’ve really got everything figured out, and yet I have this nagging desire to know what the future holds, an annoying sentiment that constantly has me wondering where my life is ultimately headed. It’s an all-too-familiar feeling that has plagued my conscious thought for the last few years. For so long, this familiar was exciting, welcoming, fascinating – I held to the belief that things would work out in the end; so, I was just going along for the ride, enjoying the view. But, after twenty-some odd years of structured existence, I am left in a completely unstructured world for the first time, with the unfamiliar ability to make every conscious (and even unconscious) decision directly impacting my life.
And it’s daunting…incredibly so.
Growing up, I, along with many of my other generational peers, have had many options and choices: apple juice or milk, soccer or gymnastics, piano or violin lessons, state school or out-of-state school. For me, personally, these choices provided broad experiences, memories, and skills that will last me throughout my lifetime. As college was well underway, I realized that I had just as many of those decisions waiting to be made on the other side – I panicked. But, I quelled my fears, knowing that my internship would likely see me through to a job that I would completely enjoy, and that’s all there is to life at that point, right? Graduate from college, land a plush job…live life.
A little over two years ago, I had the fortunate opportunity of landing my dream job: the one I had visions of at age eight…and then again at ten…and then again at 14…and another time at sixteen...and still to this day. So, why am I so keen on knowing what the future holds? Why, though fully content with my present position, am I even remotely concerned about where I see myself in 5, 10, 15, or 20 years?
As I’ve struggled to answer these questions in the past few months, I’ve come to realize that this feeling is all too prevalent for my peers, as well. They, too, are struggling with the familiar thoughts and emotions that the uncertainty of our twenties brings. We lead such brick-house lives, in that everything is given to us or decided for us; we’re told exactly what to do and when to do it. The choices we are given, the decisions we make for ourselves, are still within the confines of a societal and parental structure that is deemed appropriate by those around us. We have all been brought up in a day and age where the options are limitless, and yet we still are not given much guidance in understanding and focusing our efforts towards creating meaning lives for ourselves. My generation is plagued with materialistic thoughts and expectations. We have all grown up with a plethora of electronics and goods in our homes to supplement our lives. Our parents worked tirelessly to provide us with the very best they could afford.
And yet, many of us embark on our journeys into the “real world” with little to no idea of what awaits us. We continually seek a sense of purpose in our lives, a way to understand our place in the world. And when we realize that the size of the world is inversely proportional to the likelihood of our making an impact on it, we’re left with a feeling of confusion and restlessness to actually redefine our sense of self.
So, what can we do? How can we take all of the vast number of resources available to us and turn it into our driving force? How do we use all of these things to our advantage to understand the world, ourselves, and ultimately navigate out of the murky waters of our twenties? What can we do differently as we approach this incongruous juncture in our lives to arrive on the opposite end of our 20s as driven, focused individuals whose professional and personal lives are not individual driving forces, but together help us understand our relevancy in the world?
I realized as these questions formed in my mind that if the answers were simple, and those I looked to for support for every other problem had the answers, then I’d have been golden maybe a few months, or even years, ago. I was curious what majority of my peers had the same struggles and thoughts that I did and what types of concerns they had. I wondered whether other generations felt pangs of the same sort in their twenties. I thought about our society and my upbringing, interested in what factors could have possibly led me to feel this way and how things could have changed to help prepare me more for the “real world.”
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that we need a means of proactively addressing this struggle that we twenty-somethings face, a struggle that is more commonplace than many would care to admit or acknowledge. We need a means of preempting these feelings of hopelessness, listlessness, and frivolity. We need to not only understand the individual sources of these personal feelings, but develop a method for coping with their effects and eventually overcoming them effectively and efficiently.
With this in mind, I've decided to segue the purpose of this blog from just an avenue for person venting to perhaps a constructive analysis of the factors that influence the upbringing and development of those fondly dubbed, "Generation Y." As this site develops, I hope to add to it not only my own thoughts, but those of others around me. Perhaps eventually, it could turn into a source of added perspective to a topic of discussion that, though widespread, is often discounted or avoided.
