The Roaring 20s

The 20s aren't meant to be easy - but that fact gets buried fairly often. Nestled somewhere between the trying years of adolescence and the feared complacency of routine that characterize the teens and the 30s, respectively, the 20s are supposed to be "the best years of your life." Old enough to drink, young enough not to care about mortgages and "real" responsibilities. Idealistic enough to believe, pragmatic enough to execute.

Tacking on that label, however, can mean that those who aren't yet out of college, and those who are too far removed from the 20s, soon forget just what a weird and tumultuous time it is. Gone is the security of familiarity, with friends and family scattered throughout the state, country, world. Gone is the dependability of routine, of knowing that even the worst circumstances will come to an end coinciding with the end of a semester or school year. And most importantly, gone is the degree of certainty that there is a "correct" next step to take moving toward the next phase of life.

Being in your 20s means that, ultimately, for the first time in a long time, you really have to evaluate what it is you want, how you're going to get it, and why you want it. Prior to this vast slate known as "the real world," everything in life was comparatively neat.

Everything could be traced back to expectations. After elementary school, you moved on to junior high and high school. You worked hard in high school with the knowledge that your standardized test scores (ick) and grades would promise you success in the form of a college acceptance letter. You spend four years (or more or less) in college trying to solidify your beliefs, your thoughts, your goals as a genuinely active member of society. You expect that this, and all the things you have learned in and out of classes in your 20-something years of life, will also guarantee some form of social success. You have, after all, paid an arm and a leg for it. And then...you graduate.

Everything from there on out has absolutely nothing and everything to do with expectations. With the exception of going to grad school (this is still being in a system, in a more managed chaos), college grads are then really hit in the face with the question they should have been answering all those 20-something years ago: What do I want to do in life?

Short of hanging out with friends and exchanging woes and ideas about what it is that makes us happy, we are no longer armed with the leisurely time to really question things. There are no more classroom lessons, scheduled vacations, or discussion sections that will prompt us to think in these terms. Life after college can become pretty draining, pretty monotonous, pretty quickly.

But questioning...it's just something that needs to be done, else we toil mindlessly and just kind of drift into our 30s. And this is why the 20s are so tricky. Because the truth is, once you're out of a system, everything becomes a juggling act.

It's like piecing together a puzzle. All your years leading up to your 20s involved forming the pieces by means of learning about your likes, dislikes, interests and talents. Your 20s become, then, the years where you start to gather the disparate pieces and try to make out a discernable shape. You see what pieces you can use, which ones you can't, which ones are misshapen, and where they all fit together. But perhaps most importantly, you can, after attempting to mold all these bits together, see what is missing.

Living through the 20s is difficult because without the expectation that there is a correct route to take or a right way to piece together the puzzle, there is so much uncertainty. Life has given you enough experience and "wisdom" to recognize that you don't have all the answers and that you can't force things into place. But because the 20s involves honing and building and connecting, it's often difficult to take a step back and see that big picture.

And the missing pieces? They'll always be in the last place you look.