To all the 1999 babies, this is the year, guys and gals! We're saying goodbye to our teen years and entering a brand new chapter in our lives. So let's all raise our glasses (not with alcohol, of course, since we still have to wait another year for that to be legal...) to adulthood!
19 is a bizarre year because it's not only your last year as a teen, but it's a year of reflection of all you've experienced and learned through the time you were growing up both physically and mentally. We've been through the greatest highs with the accomplishments we achieved academically, personally, and even socially, and also pushed through the ultimate lows of our lives when we lost the people we thought would forever be in our journies. We're about to close a chapter in our lives where we established our morals and beliefs and shaped ourselves into the people we are today. Yet, as we transition into a new chapter of our lives, why does our journey ahead seem blurrier?
As I near my birthday, I should be feeling excited to celebrate with my loved ones and friends, but I feel a pit of anxiety and uncertainty within the bottom of my stomach. I feel unsure about what will be the next step after I graduate college and where I will end up for my first real adult job. Never have I felt such uncertainty because everything's been so simple up to college. Elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and then... what? I knew this systematic plan was going to end one day, but will I be able to make the right decisions afterward? Will we make the right decisions?
The answer is no.
We probably will make as many wrong decisions as we do with right ones and I genuinely believe that's a part of the process. What we need to stop doing to ourselves is painting every aspect of our lives either black or white and right or wrong because there are no right and wrong. Every right decision teaches us what is good for us and what we need to continue doing better. Every wrong decision gives us the opportunity to take a step back from our clustered lives and reevaluate what happened and what we can learn moving forward.
Our twenties will be one heck of a ride with all the words I listed before and more on top of it, but that's the thrill of it. That's the thrill of going on this journey and creating more memories and finding out who we are each day. Yes, we are entering our twenties, and yes, tons of both amazing and terrible things will probably happen, but we will get through them as we did with our teen years. So enjoy 19 and know that you'll enjoy your twenties as much as you did with everything else or even more.
