That Weird 20-Something Age Phase

Welcome to your 20's. You're not not sure what expectations you must fulfill, but you also know that you have to fulfill some expectations. What do we do, friends, when we feel that the whole world stands ahead of us but we just don't know how to conquer it. And better yet, we might know what we want, but the road twists and turns in ways we have no way of understanding.

I'm 23 and I'm going to graduate with a Bachelors in Journalism shortly after I turn 24. I have friends who turned 24 and they have achieved so many interesting milestones, like success in entrepreneurship, or they have children, or they have toured the world. Some haven't made a decision on what they want. And here I am, 24, unsure if I can fulfill a successful journalism career after graduation.

This dilemma is somewhat of a running joke. But that's how things are going as of right now. How do we know the decisions to make when we see that the political world is falling apart, meaning the environment and the economy and all that follows appears unstable to our generation. Previous generations, laugh all you want, but that's really an effect many of us 20-somethings face and feel stunned by.

Our situation feels like a tough pill to swallow, times one million because of the shift we see happening. We know technology is playing a big role in our lives, so we must find ways to adapt and catch up. But guess what, technology can take over many of the jobs we want to pursue.

We look at the economy and buying a house seems too difficult to handle without an extra financial push, like from roommates or parents, and even then, a house worth $100,000 gets sold for triple the price. So we settle for less and feel unsatisfied when others look down and question our financial decisions. Okay, say you do want to buy that house and you can afford to, many of us opt out to wait to get married because we have learned to take our time when it comes to committing to a marriage. So if we do happen to have the money for a house, what do we do with such a big financial commitment if we don't know who we will live with?

What about the environment though? I seriously consider that I don't want to bring children into a world with such strong environmental instability. So how can I feel at ease when I am constantly wondering what the future will look like from the point of fresh air, fresh water, ocean levels, animal extinctions and livable space. So again, we see the dark side of life in a way that I'm not sure previous generations felt as panicked about since environmental doom seemed so far away.

Believe it or not, there's another catch. We live in an age where mental health exploration booms and we understand that we must not ignore mental health, yet we get criticized for being hyper sensitive for recognizing the issues we have. So instead of focusing on properly coping with mental health, we get criticized. And I know at the end of the day you got to do what you got to do and shut out all the people who don't support you, but that's not always easy, especially if you have a mental health issue to cope with.

So what does our 20-something generation do? Most of us lead normal lives, believe it or not. We go out and we get an education and we have relationships. But we also have to handle this stress one way or another. So we make memes about our misery and we share a laugh about it because many of us sail the same boat. That doesn't mean the issues don't exist and that doesn't mean we lead happy lives.

If you see a 20-something struggling don't add onto their plate by criticizing that they live different from previous generations. We simply want to figure out our future and we just happen to live in a completely unstable time. We want to figure it out, we want to know where we fit into society and we want to succeed. Have patience with us, our times differ from others, that doesn't mean one time period is harder than the other, but our struggles surely differ.