Approaching 2016 is pretty bittersweet because it is the year that many of my peers, including myself, are turning 20.
This revelation is very strange. It seems like just yesterday I was coming home from second grade, grabbing a granola bar, and reading to my American Girl doll (yes, I was a very strange child). Sometimes, I miss the days when the closest I got to "career planning" was lining up my stuffed animals and playing school.
But idealizing the past does no good. The thing about looking back is that we start to only remember the good, when in reality, there were a lot of hard times too. The days where I was "happy to be eight" were few and far between.
There were probably many more days where all we wanted was to be older, to be able to drive a car or have our own bank accounts or go on dates or cook our own food. But now we realize that all these things are actually really, really stressful. Many times, we feel like this:
But these aren't the only things you learn when you get older. Sure, there are a lot of additional stressors that come into the picture, but there's also a lot more freedom. Looking forward to a career is now real. We are at a point in our lives where we can finally make things happen- we can walk, drive, or subway to that job interview we've always dreamed of having, save up for a plane ticket to go places we've always wanted to go, and we don't have to ask our parents about every little life decision we make.
Your 20s are a time in life when you can finally do the things you've always wanted to do because you are old enough to have the means to do them but are young enough to have the energy to do them. So while many life decisions await us in this coming decade, there are so many adventures awaiting us as well.
Think of what your eight-year-old self would want you to be doing.
You're at a scary place in life. But you're ready for it. Think of the "What I Want to Be When I Grow Up" boards and the games you used to play with your Barbie dolls, making them go to work. Think of the day you signed up to take your standardized tests to get into college and the day you submitted your common application. You wanted to be where you are right now not all that long ago.
You might be on a bit of a plateau now that reality has set in. But reality, unfortunately, is a force that never stops following us around. So, if you, too are on the brink of this foreboding new decade, enter into it with the confidence that it is going to be the best one of your life. Never again will this much opportunity await you. You've spent your whole life waiting for it: now it's here.
