Rejoice twenty-somethings!

The New York Times article on the new stage of adolescence – the period that covers the twenties, approximately – is still making the rounds. Twenty-somethings graduate, but they do not go immediately into the work force. They remain in a sort of twilight adolescence, seem dependent, try on different sorts of lives. Life is longer; this is a luxury we can now afford. Strange how people are reacting as it the piece were somehow a criticism. But not at all – an observation. Things have changed. Different theories might explain it, but they don’t matter. All social change comes about through a strange nexus of events – change is very rarely good or bad or even intentional. It just is. People have protested that twenty-somethings don’t want to hang out for several years in what is essentially a state of animated suspension. They have been forced into the status by the economic climate, by the dismal job outlook. They have complained that it simply isn’t true, that young people are more pressured than ever to accomplish great things, build up their CV.

I say that none of this matters; the essential thing is that we now have yet another model for plotting out a life. The more numerous and the more flexible the options for creating a life happen to be, the greater the number of potentially satisfied people. Whatever the reason twenty-somethings happen to find themselves in an in-between place, they can now profit from the position. You take the hand life deals you and you play it. Now we have been handed one more way of making sense out of the play, another option for winning.

I rejoice. I have a lost decade, a period that I have always looked back upon with shame. Now I have the means to reclaim that time. So many horrors – too many and too deep to speak of. And then I grew. It took me a long time to break away from home, to realize that I was just reproducing my own miserable situation. Little by little I clawed my way out, started to make decisions. It took a lot of time to get educated, to see through the fog. But I did. And I want to take back those years as a victory rather than a loss. It was a time of voyage and sorrow. There were many adventures.

I have a distressing image from that time – a young woman on her knees praying in a house that was not hers. Begging God to deliver her from the prison of her life. God of course did not listen – and, indeed, there were many Gods colliding in that house. Big blown up deities making all the decisions, creating reality, brewing the very air that she breathed. Did God deliver her from that place? Of course not. It was in God’s interest that she stay there. But as round-faced, helpless, and earnest as she was, she finally developed a tiny bit of any edge. It got sharper. She began to carve her way out, cut the God stuff away, excise a life that was still animate from a clump of fat. Then she got on a plane and it was off to find a new day.

Yes, twenty-somethings! Rejoice in this new possibility! Take your time and think. Experience. Remember that it is only in the past thirty years of so that we have even been able to conceive of self-fulfillment as a serious life’s goal.