My 19-and-a-half-year-old friends saying they can’t believe that I’m so old now isn’t anything new. With my birthday falling right at the beginning of the academic year, I’ve always been one of the oldest in my class. It’s just that this year, even though it doesn’t make much sense for people a few months younger than me to tell me I’m old, it kind of feels true.
I’m no longer a teenager and definitely can’t justifiably order off the kids’ menu anymore. Other than that, 20 is kind of a useless birthday. I can still vote. I still can’t buy cough syrup. Even Yahoo! Answers doesn’t have a better answer for “What can you do when you turn 20?” than “Have a 20th birthday party.”
If turning 20 felt like a big deal, it was only because it feels like I should have accomplished something by this point. What have I done in the past 20 years?
My first reaction is to say nothing. It’s an easy answer. It’s much simpler to despair over what you haven’t done than to actually identify what you have; it's easier to devalue all of your accomplishments rather than try to measure them. The problem is that saying that I’ve done nothing with my life is totally false.
In the past 20 years, I did actually learn some basic human functions. I learned to talk, walk, and read. I was taught colors, numbers, and names. I figured out through trial and error not to touch the stove when it’s on, that a fistful of sand is not a satisfying snack, what things break when you throw them on the floor. I was a little late in the game in distinguishing left from right, learning to tie my shoes, and taking the training wheels off my bike, but this all came to me eventually.
Once I had being an independently functioning human being under control, I had a lot more to work on. Between practicing algebra, tap dancing, and making the perfect grilled cheese, I made a lot of progress in navigating relationships with other people and with myself.
I’ve produced quite a bit with my own two hands. I made some fantastic macaroni art, thousands of ballpoint pen doodles, some killer mix tapes, and many handmade Christmas presents of questionable quality. My notebook collection and maze of computer files archive years of diaries, thoughts, essays, poems, stories, and plays. I haven’t cured any diseases, invented anything spectacular, become famous, or even gotten my driver’s license. I can’t sum up everything I’ve done in a sentence or five hundred words or in any number of words. One thing is clear: it’s not nothing.
I have no idea what I’ll accomplish in the next 20 years. I don’t know if it will amount to more or to less, I don’t know if experience can really be weighed like that. Even if there are days that I spend mostly on Netflix, if sometimes I worry that everything I’ve ever written is garbage, I’ll still know at least that once I hula-hooped for an hour straight, I’ve read my favorite book four times, I’ve made wonderful friends, and created things that I’m proud of. If I think about it hard enough, that’s actually pretty incredible.
