“I feel like a child imitating an adult”
-Ben Stiller in While We’re Young
That phrase has captured the essence of being an adult. After living out a quarter of a century of my life thus far, I’ve learned so much and nothing all at the same time. There is still so much of my life yet to live, yet I feel like I’m definitely gaining some wisdom through these past five years.
Being an eighties baby, I grew up in the nineties generation. The time period where short skirts and crop tops were all the rage; scrunchies and super tight pony tails with really long bangs hanging down over our face covering our shimmery baby blue eye shadow. Pokémon made its debut, and we lived for watching Power Rangers and Recess on Saturday mornings. Britney Spears shaped our musical culture. Titanic hit theaters everywhere. Pontiac Sunfires were the cool car to drive once we reached high school. Homecoming consisted of us shaking our butts to the edited version of Get Low.
We were free to be kids without the incessant need for technology. Yet we could just start getting our hands on the face plate-changing Nokia cell phones once we were in middle school. The new age was there for us to shape and mold. We had MySpace after all. But we still knew the joys of the outside world.
We grew up with the real evolution of technology. Our age group is almost the guinea pig of sorts for all of the modern advances in the industry. What worked and didn’t work, we know full well.
Twenty something year olds are in that awkward phase right now, where half have real “grown-up” jobs and half still work part-time at Burger King. Half are still looking for their soulmate and half have been married for four years already. Half still live with their parents and half have bought houses. Some have kids and some don’t, some have their master’s degree and some haven’t even started college yet.
What I’ve learned from this is that everyone gets on with their own life at their own pace. There is no rush to do something just because someone else is doing it.
When I was watching the movie While We’re Young the other day, I couldn’t get over how dead on that movie is. This couple is trying to get through life while all their friends around them are having kids and starting families. They meet a younger couple who lives freely, basically doing what they want to do and having fun without taking life too seriously. The first couple envies that younger lifestyle and tries to mimic them, wanting that freedom in their own lives. They are at a cross road where they still want to feel like adults while being the kids that they are at heart.
I know I’m not in my late thirties, but I completely felt their desires and pulls in both directions. Being in my twenties, even now while I’m in my upper years of this decade, I know I’m still basically a baby to most adults. And I do still feel like a kid in a lot of aspects of my life, even though I’m not a kid anymore.
My friends and I have been through multiple cars, school, promotions, moves, crushes and heartbreaks, weddings, divorces, miscarriages, births, and deaths. So yes, while we are still considered young, we’ve experienced quite a bit.
I believe the best example of this is with the song Here’s to Us by Halestorm. No matter what we go through, ups and downs, just brush it off and appreciate yourself. The line, “the last few days have kicked my ass, so let’s give them hell. Wish everybody well…here’s to us.” This sums up life to the core. No one’s life is perfect. But you need to have a smile on your face and hope that it will get better; because that is really all that you can do.
Life isn’t all rainbows and butterflies…things will make you cry. But life isn’t all pure crap either…there will be little things throughout the week that will make you laugh, smile, or at least smirk. You just keep moving in hopes that you can better someone else’s life along the way.
Figuring out what life’s little secrets are, is part of the joy of living. That’s why everyone isn’t a cyborg. We all have the ability to think how we want to think in our head. To figure out things the way we were created to, no matter what culture we are in. One of the many reasons why it is better to be human than be a rose bush.
At twenty-five years old, I know how my life is and I know the experiences of my friends and their feelings. I wonder however, what it was like to be twenty-five in 1967, or better yet how about 1936. What was it like in the 1800s, the 1600s, or the 1500s? Did they have pressures about growing up like we do now?
The joys of owning your first house, having a child, getting married, and graduating college are all goals I believe some of us realize for what they are worth while others take for granted. These life achievements are actually huge milestones; huge beyond belief. Other cultures and countries don’t experience them like we do here in the USA. And even in our country, people can’t imagine what it is like to get accepted into college.
As I try to get my career figured out, redecorate my new house, and plan my wedding all at the same time as I’m living the rest of my life, I can’t help but reevaluate how I feel. Normally I’m super wore out and want a nap. I consider myself stressed out and usually want a month vacation to myself to do nothing at all. That is my initial reaction to all the tasks I have on my plate. But once I reevaluate everything I realize how grateful I am and lucky that I can do all of these things. I have this lovely roof over my head that I get to call my own and that I get to make my own and redecorate as I’d like. I get to start on my new adventures with my career, all while knowing that I have work that will pay the bills. I can plan a wedding with my soulmate knowing we’re going to spend our futures together. All of these hugely daunting tasks are more like miracles in a way. I get to do as I please to make my life worth it. And I get to do it all at the age of twenty-six. Maybe being an adult isn’t so bad, and I’m only a quarter of a century and counting.
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