I find myself walking on a tightrope lately, juggling a million dreams and a thousand nightmares. Or perhaps that’s just how it feels to be in your twenties.
There comes a point when you feel like you’re standing on a cliff, looking out into this vast, foggy abyss. And behind you, there’s the childhood that was left behind many summers ago. In the space of a second, life becomes a series of “before” and “afters.” Now there are deadlines to meet, goals to pursue, and titles to adorn your name with.
When I look around, I see everyone onto something—showing off their achievements, getting their dream jobs, or acing their exams. And I wonder if I missed the memo. The one that told us how to have it all figured out. The one that promised a seamless transition from childhood to this.
It’s the story we’ve been told, an age-old narrative shoved down our throats. Do more, want more, hustle more. Every person I knew in school told me they wanted to change the world. Yet somehow it feels like we’re running out of time before even having started. Haven’t we all been doing everything we were told to? Did we read the instructions wrong, or were they never clear in the first place?
But time couldn’t care less about waiting around for anybody. It flies by faster than ever. Seeing your friends becomes harder and harder. The things you want seem farther and farther. You watch yourself no longer fit in a world that felt tailored all around you.
“How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?“
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mary-oliver-in-the-new-yorker
It is such an unreasonable expectation to have—expecting too much from ourselves and too little from life. A time supposed to be about finding ourselves, our kind, and our passion has turned into a race against the clock. A race to have everything figured out before it’s too late. A race turning us into cogs to fit in a machine. A machine that operates under the assumption that “that’s just how the world works.”
ARE YOU DOING ENOUGH? YES
And so, in a world bent on convincing me that I’m only as good as my youth, I rebel in my own silly ways. I try to stomach my age. And I remind myself that it’s not me or you who is wrong, but the reality of this world running on harm. I am finally at the age that all these people I looked up to as a young person were. It’s bittersweet and strange. But that’s the reason why they’re called formative years.
I rebel by listening to the songs I did at seventeen and by dreaming of being thirty someday. I rebel when I stop comparing myself to others and realize that everyone has their own story to tell. That everyone deserves a chance to live it. That life is not a straight line, but a winding road. That taking a break doesn’t mean falling behind. That growing older doesn’t mean losing yourself. Being twenty-one doesn’t mean having it all figured out. Despite what everyone says, the choices I make in this span won’t set the rest of my life in concrete.
There are days when everything appears to be collapsing on its head and all doors are closing on you. But there are also days when you feel that you’ve come a long way. The helplessness you felt at sixteen is gone. The ache of being eighteen is fading, slowly but surely. You come around to the idea that this is not the end of the world; it is just a phase. A decade of physical prime and mental rock bottom. You’re still looking for your place in this world, and that’s okay. Maybe you’re not “wasting” your twenties; you’re just living them, and that’s okay.
