There is an impressive collection of articles online about how to ‘navigate your twenties’. Though they all suggest different survival guides, they all agree that your twenties are a period of incredible internal conflict, exponential growth and an unnerving, unwavering pressure. For the first time in our lives we have the ability to make the fiction of our future tangible and while this may be exciting, it is equally terrifying.
Most of us live with a list of potentials in our heads regarding our own life path often categorised as Plan A, Plan B, etc, etc. These may be organised by passion or practicality but regardless of the driving force, everybody is victim to the same pervasive internal voice of your twenties. It makes sure you know that you’re not doing enough or better yet, but instead that you are doing the exact opposite of what you should be.
Studying? You should be out. Joining a running club? You should be reading more. Single? Taken? You’re wasting precious time. And so we run ourselves mad within a paradoxical loop of self-sabotage and expectation.
Over the past 50 years, the arbitrary timeline for ‘adult milestones’ such as marriage, birth and moving out has progressively been getting pushed back later in life. We are no longer expected to be as steadfast in constructing our independent domestic lives akin to our parents’ generation. This is due to a number of economic and systemic social developments but it inspires the question: what do we do with all this extra time?
Dependence has become a symptom of the cost of living, which makes it harder for people to grow outside of their familiar dynamic. We grow under the shadow of our parents, which does not allow for any personal development without external influence. Moving away is an incredible motivator for expanding your view of the world and understanding of yourself. It pushes you outside of the confines of your routine and allows you to detach from the environment that associates you with your past. Comfortability guides behaviour more than you will realise until you break away from that pattern, and what better way to deal with the overwhelming quarter-life crisis of your twenties than running away?
A controversial take, perhaps, but I say yes! You can run away from your feelings. An opinion evidently shared by many of today’s youth as the number of young people migrating is increasing. The goal is to be so consumed with the ‘new’ that the pressure of tomorrow is decreased. I do not mean to suggest that we should throw caution to the wind and abandon ship. You can still maintain your goals within a new environment, and the skills you develop when you push yourself into new experiences are incomparable.
The important thing to remember is your future is not determined by a selection of decisions you make in your twenties, thirties, and beyond. There is an abundance of time, there is no race and as Billy Joel once said— “Vienna waits for you.”
Image by Alicia Christin Gerald on Unsplash.