I’ve previously written how surreal it is to be aware of a life transition as it’s occurring. Now, I’m finding myself – and my micro-generation – facing a different and more existential progression. So, if you’ve completely figured out your life by now, maybe this Blogcat’s not for you.
As you grow up and graduate college there are 395 different questions to consider. Where do I want to live? What do I want to do with my life? How do I get there? As my peers and I are now solidly in, or at least entering, our late 20s, we’ve made progress on these fronts for sure, but are still trying to answer a lot of these questions.
For me personally, I got married in September, and my wife and I are now contemplating what’s next for our lives and for our family. This state of mind seems like a natural progression. However, as I think about my friends, I realize you don’t have to be wifed up to be unsure of what’s next. Whether they recently got out of grad school but don’t know what to do, can’t decide between moving to California or Colorado, or wonder whether to get a dog or have kids, most people I know seem to be a bit lost mapping out their best path forward.
Do I go to grad school? Do I change cities to start a new job? Should I move in with my boyfriend? These are the same choices we were facing 5 years ago, and the what, where, and why of them are just as important. My theory, though, is that many of my peers are struggling more than before because of (1) the who and (2) the when.
Although there are exceptions to this, most people spend their entire adolescence living in the same town, often attending the same school district from elementary to middle to high school. In these situations, your family and friends interact with you in-person on a near-daily basis, and live in your home or only a few streets away. This same dynamic applies to life in college – everyone in your undergraduate world is part of the same physical community. And for both of those two stages, your peers are locked into those locations for fixed and substantial periods of time; aside from someone moving or transferring, you basically can count on nobody going anywhere.
As the years progress, though, your social community spreads out geographically. You have family and friends in Sweden, San Francisco, Houston, New York and Boston, with only slight variations in density among them. Beyond even that, the dispersion is difficult to predict, given the life choices those friends and family members might make; you never know if your buddy in Philly might move to New York, or your brother might leave Chicago to live near his own friends. The wide distribution, and the threat of upheaval, make it hard to prioritize where your friends live in making these decisions.
But how do you not prioritize that?
It’s not just the “who,” though, but it’s also the “when,” as our questions are no longer just what kind of adult we want to be; it’s now, too, how soon we are ready to become one. When you make decisions in your early 20’s you’re still young when the repercussions of those choices materialize. Maybe you don’t have your life together and your career planned, but you’re still a kid, and the span between now and adulthood seems so long you assume you’ll figure out your dreams by the time you get there. As we approach 30, these same questions have the taste of finality; while I’m still young now, by the time the next phase of my life pans out, I’ll be an adult. I probably won’t think of myself that way, but I will be.
Not everyone is at this stage, it’s true. But some are, and as we ponder how ready we are to start our adult life, we also are deciding how ready we are to move on from our final adolescent one. Not entirely, of course, but in certain facets, indisputably.
That’s a tough thing to know, and to come to terms with. It’s sad, in a way. The past and the present have so often been great. But, as a cliche might say, Peter Pan has to grow up at some point. There eventually comes a time, as Aemon Targaryen tells Jon Snow, to “Kill the Boy.”
There’s no arguing whether or not that will happen. It will. I guess, then, the only questions really left to answer are when, and with whom. And those are weighty matters to consider for sure.