I love my twenties. I’ve been blessed with amazing opportunities, studying abroad, living and working in some of the most vibrant cities in the world and having the freedom to make the most of them. But I find the ‘best years of your life’ rhetoric depressing.
More and more being a twenty something means uncertainty. In job security, housing crises, relationships and bank account balances. While some of this is self inflicted, as Beth Sandland explored in her recent post The Problem With The ‘Treat Yourself’ Mentality, much of this falls outside of our control. How absurd, to then say that these twenty something years are some sort of crowning glory.
#Livingmybestlife. In the current age this is equally likely to caption a picture of a luxury beach resort as one of a box of Dominos. We feel an immense pressures to have our lives sorted. To be incredibly successful professionally, have a perfect relationship and a super trendy flat all the while being spontaneous and checking the box on those quintessential twenty-something experiences. Impossible standards meet an economy that makes pizza seem a luxury. And yet these years are the end all be all? Spontaneous, uncertain twenties gilded by nostalgia while the rest of our lives are meaningless?
So no, I hope that my twenties aren’t the best years of my life. I want things to go up. I want to be incandescently happy in my thirties as my life continues to take shape. I want to feel joie de vivre down to my very bones in my forties. I want to be fabulous at fifty and beyond, one of those classy ladies that wears vintage couture just because. I want to achieve things in each decade of my life that makes me glow with pride. Growth, building happiness year after year.
To my fellow twenty-somethings, this isn’t the happy ending, but rather a happy beginning. Yes there’s student loans, job hunts and the absolutely baffling nature of our dating lives. But we have to start somewhere, and from here the only direction to go is up.
Xx
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