We grow up idolizing celebrities, 20-something-year-old family members, and our cooler older siblings. We grow up always wanting to be older, to be wiser, to be cooler; we grow up wanting to have it all figured out. We think by the time we are finally that 20-something cooler family member, our lives will be as fun and adventurous as the ones we grew up watching. We will also have our own place, a lot of fun stories, and the ability to dye our hair whatever color we want and eat dessert before dinner without anyone telling us we can't because we're the adults. Some of this is true. Most of it isn't.
It may be true that we have our own place and we probably are slightly more mature than we were at 14, but none of us have it all together. We can tell our parents' friends about our double majors and long list of extra-curricular activities with two side jobs all while working in a research lab that is going to find the cure for cancer, but we don't have it all together. In reality, most nights we sit at home staring at a textbook pretending to read but actually sleeping with our eyes open. We go to class telling ourselves we have our life together when there is actually something sticky in our hair and a stain our yoga pants we've worn for three days in a row. We show up for work with a smile hiding the fact that we just left our mom the third voicemail of the day threatening to drop-out because it turns out we don't actually know what we want to do with our lives anymore. We tell our friends on Monday that we will definitely go out with them on Friday only to get to Friday and want to go to bed at 5 p.m. Regardless of how many AP classes we took in high school, how many SAT prep courses we completed, or how many times we scheduled out our "life plan," we don't have it all figured out. I'm here to tell you that that's okay.
Our public education system has produced a group of incredibly insecure 20-something's that feel like they are failures because they have grown up putting their worth and their abilities into numbers. Want to feel like you've accomplished something in your high school career? Be valedictorian. Want to feel like you will accomplish anything in your future? Have a 4.0 GPA. Want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that your life matters and you have a purpose? Stretch yourself to the max trying to be involved in every single extra curricular you. Add all of these up and you get a generation of 20-somethings that doubt their worth and abilities because they get to college and no longer have their lives all figured out. This is hogwash.
Twenty is a time to grow spiritually, personally, and emotionally. It's an age where you're old enough to make the right decisions but young enough to make the wrong ones. It's time to learn how to be on your own while also having the safety net of home. Travel, read, learn how you like your eggs cooked, if you function better in the morning or at night, if you prefer books to movies. Figure out what qualities you like and don't like in a partner and don't settle. Figure out what it means to be yourself without anyone else telling you who you should be and what you should do with your life. Twenty is not a time to beat yourself up and to feel like a failure. You're too young for that, you've got your whole life ahead of you to figure it out. Be smart, be young, be happy; you won't ever get this time back.
So next time you feel like you're failing, like you are just scrambling around for answers, remember that you're not alone. There is no guidebook telling you exactly how to handle everything life throws at you. We can learn and grow from the wisdom of those around us but we also have to learn a few things for ourselves. There are going to be hard weeks and when they come, rock those stained yoga pants to class with your head held high because this is the time in your life that that's acceptable.
It's okay to not have it all figured out, because nobody ever really does.
