I'll be the first one to admit that I'm in a transition period in my life. In fact, if you're reading this you probably are too. We're in that awkward stage in our lives where we have some semblance of what we want to do, but we find reassurance in the possibilities of the future. This causes us to delay making important, big boy decisions because we're scared of the weight that they carry. If we choose job A, city B, or girlfriend C that shuts the door (or at leasts starts to close it) on job X, city Y, or potential girlfriend Z. This hesistance to make a meaningful decision helps define this period as one of transition. We feel like adults, but at the same time, we don't. Maybe we live in our own apartment, but our parents help pay the rent. Maybe we're in a good position on the corporate ladder, but we aren't in a committed relationship. Maybe we have a child (doubtful if you're reading this), but we don't have a college degree.
Psychologists point to five distinct milestones as a way to define this transitional period.
-completing school
-leaving the house
-becoming financially independent
-marrying
-having a child
Now if you're keeping score at home, I've only accomplished 2 of the 5 milestones (completing school and leaving the house) and I'm on my way to becoming financially independent, which I think helps explain why I'm fully aware of the transition that I'm participating in. Evidently, and I think we all could have guessed this, it's taking people our age longer and longer to achieve all five milestones.
In a recent NY Times article titled
"What Is It About 20-Somethings?" Robin Marantz Henig writes,
"The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain untethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach For America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life."
So why are so many 20 somethings delaying adulthood?
Well for starters, once they graduate from college they are literally thrust into the real world to either sink or swim. They either hit the ground running or they revert back to their old ways (i.e. grad school, temporary jobs with no career trajectory, etc.). What makes the first few years after college tough is that 20 somethings are stripped of the structure that they had grown accustomed to over the past 15-18 years. Once school ends, they are sort of at a loss. By in large, students knew what they had to do to succeed. The structure was pretty simple and straight forward. If you met the minimum requirements (grades/credits) you moved on to the next grade the following year. Eventually though, there are no more grades to go to. It's at this point that this structure is literally just pulled out from underneath their feet and all they have to show for it is a framed piece of paper.
This post-school lack of structure is part of what makes this transition to adulthood so difficult. There's just no clear cut way to gauge progress in the real world. Everything is relative, so there's no way of knowing where young adults are on their journey toward adulthood. The structure that our educational system provides is by no means the only structure that there is, but it's the only one that 20 somethings have ever known. Once it's taken from them, it takes a while to make the adjustments necessary to find something to fill its place.
We may not even know it, but that's part of the reason why so many of us still cling to our college years. Sure we miss the parties, bars, classmates, etc., but we also miss knowing and understanding the rules of the game. What the guidelines are. How to succeeed. Unfortunately though, there's no syllabus in the real world.
This lack of structure, or change in the way that we find structure, definitely helps to explain this cultural shift, but the driving force behind the delay towards adulthood is fear. In fact, I think I would go as far as to say that fear is the number one driving force behind most human actions. 20 somethings are undoubtedly in an uncertain time in their lives, which means that they have a lot to be fearful of.
20 somethings, like most people, are afraid of change. No one likes leaving a comfortable environment for one that they are unfamiliar with. This plays into the point I made about structure. Recent graduates cling to college life because they are familiar with the way things operated there. Over the course of their four years they became comfortable with their surroundings and what they had to do to get by. Once they are removed from this comfort zone they dread having to achieve the same level of comfort in a new environment.
Young adults are also fearful of choosing the wrong path. We think we know what we want to do, but we aren't really sure until we actually do it. Not many people our age have a genuine calling or vocation. Even those that do (i.e. priests, teachers, etc.) still question whether or not they are making the right choice. 20 somethings don't like taking risks. We like to be sure of ourselves before we make decisions, but the real world waits for no one.
As scary as choosing the wrong path is, eliminating other possibilities might be even scarier. Most of us have been told our entire lives that we can do whatever it is that we want to do with our lives and that we'll be successful no matter what we choose. But what if we aren't sure what it is that we want to do? What if choosing profession A eliminates the possibiliy of profession B and when it's all said and done profession B would have made us happier? Simply put, we like options. We like having Plan B ready to go in case Plan A fails. Eliminating options isn't easy, so if we can put off doing so, we will.
Another reason that we 20 somethings are so fearful of these grown up questions is because of their significance. The decisions that 20 somethings face are literally life changing. I don't care how much schooling we've received, nothing can prepare you for that. Seriously, think about the hardest decisions 20 somethings have had to make thus far in their lives.
Who should I ask to the prom? Where should I go to college? What should I major in?
So when it comes to
What should I do with my life? and
Do I want to spend the rest of my life with her? it's only natural to delay really analyzing them.
"Decisions and actions during this time have lasting ramifications. The 20s are when most people accumulate almost all of their formal edication; when most people meet their future spouses and the friends they will keep; when most people start on the careers that they will stay with for many years. This is when adventures, experiments, travels, relationships, etc. are embarked on with an abandon that probably will not happen again."
I think many of us are simply scared to really ask ourselves these questions. Maybe we're scared of the answers. I don't really know for sure, but serious soul searching isn't fun. I for one know that I don't like to do it, even though it runs contrary to one of the quotes that I aim to live by.
"The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them." -Denis Watley
I think it's just that we don't want to get caught up in the seriousness of the questions. What if we aren't married with kids by age 30? What if we don't live up to the expectations we set for ourselves? I think we'd rather take a wait and see approach instead of deciding that we want something that might not happen. Again, we're afraid to take risks and we're afraid to fail.
"The stakes are higher when people are approaching the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments must be made."
It's interesting that we tend to shy away from asking ourselves these serious questions because this is the time in our lives when we are most consumed with ourselves. Soon, we will have significant others and kids that take away our attention. Our commitment to our own personal growth is at it's peak as a 20 something, yet we delay addressing these tough, personal questions.
Instead of dealing with the
Is this the right career path for me to take? or the
Can I raise a family in this city? we prefer to take the wait and see approach. We have such positive aspirations for our futures and we sort of expect things to just sort of work out in our favor. I mean, why would they not? We can do anything that we want to do and we'll be succesful in whatever it is that we choose to do, remember?
Believe it or not, a Yale psychologist named Kenneth Keniston noticed a rising faction of young adults who exhibited this "pervasive ambivalence toward self and society," back in the late 1960's. He wrote of, "a growing minority of post adolescents who have not settled the questions whose answers once defined adulthood: questions of relationship to the existing society, questions of vocation, questions of social role and lifestyle." He continued by saying that, "such aimlessness was once seen only in the unusually creative or unusually disturbed."
So maybe this is a cultural thing? I mean, I think we all realize that people are getting married later, having kids later, etc. We never really knew why, but we accepted that this was happening. Perhaps our recognition of this change in societal behavior has altered the way that we look at these significant adult events. A generation ago, most of my friends from highschool or college would be married, but in today's day and age, none of them are. I think a lot of that has to do with finances (my apologies to love) and that ties right in with this changing landscape of adulthood. People aren't as financial well off right out of the gate as they were back in the 1970's and '80's. Not to say that they were raking it in, but nowadays kids are just looking for a foot in the door, so they'll settle for an unpaid internship or hope to go temp to hired. If the finances aren't there, it's tough to buy an engagement ring, house, start a family, etc.
"Cultural expectations might also reinforce the delay. The changing timetable for adulthood has, in many ways, become internalized by 20 somethings. Today, young people don't expect to marry until their late 20s, don't expect to start a family until their 30s, don't expect to be on track for a rewarding career until much later than their parents were. So they make decisions about their futures that reflect this wider time horizon. Many of them would not be ready to take on the trappings of adulthood any earlier even if the opportunity arose; they haven't braced themselves for it."
Again, we feel like adults, but we know that we aren't truly adults. Not yet anyway. The decisions and actions that will make us true adults are on the horizon, but we're scared of heading in that direction. We won't ask ourselves the tough questions because we hope that the answers will just make themselves apparent to us. We just keep prodding along assuming that we'll figure it all out sooner or later.
It hasn't even crossed my mind. I'm years away from that. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Well guess what? We're almost at the bridge. So start thinking about the answers to the questions that will eventually shape who you are and who you become.
"If you're feeling frightened about what comes next, don't be. Embrace the uncertainty. Allow it to lead you places. Be brave as it challenges you to exercise both your heart and your mind as you create your own path towards happiness, don't waste time with regret. Spin wildly into your next action. Enjoy the present, each moment, as it comes; because you'll never get another one quite like it. And if you should ever look up and find yourself lost, simply take a breath and start over. Retrace your steps and go back to the purest place in your heart... where your hope lives. You'll find your way again."
