I am living the last days of my 20s, and I am certain of the fact that for the 30s, I am not yet ready- I might never be ready, but I guess that’s the thing with us- more often than not we are not ready for the next thing in our lives till the time the next thing hits us hard on our face and now we know that not being ready is not an option for us anymore.
I remember in my very early 20s, when I was in college, I was as optimistic about life as can be despite the fact that I’d write horrendous poems about love and death, and now that I see people in their early 20s writing passionate poems about love and death, I know that this is a phase, and by the time they’d reach 30s, they could still be writing poems about love and death, but the poems would be of a completely different kind.
We learn and we grow every day, but learning and growing in our 20s happens so fast that for most of us, the time seems to be gone too fast, too soon. It’s like 20s has got a huge gravity of its own that slows down time for us but the world move on. We end up feeling like we lived hardly four years in the ten. I am using “we” because, in many of my conversations with my friends (males), everyone agreed to this.
Now that we’ve settled on “we” and I feel safe enough to say that based on the most common experiences most of us experience in our 20s, we all seem to lead very similar lives, and thus, our lives in our 20s can be divided in a number of phases:
The phase of utmost optimism and impatience
This is us in the early 20s when we are just in college and we seem to have figured out what we want to do in life- to finish the college and get to any work, learn enough, save enough, and start our own venture, and in the middle keep appearing in competitive exams. We are sure this is as easy as we think, but it is only later that we realise that landing on a job requires us to request too many people to give us leads, subscribing to newspapers, and reaching out to friends who somehow got a job. Sooner or later, we get a job, but soon realise that it is not the job for us and it would take us centuries to save anything. This leads to the phase of impatience when we jump from one job to another and from one organisation to another in the hope of getting a better deal. For the employers, hiring someone in their early 20s is a risk they should rather avoid.
Finding the soulmate
This can happen anytime in the decade, and no matter how clever we think we are, we end up making absolute fools of ourselves. We meet someone who rings a bell in our heart and we instantly know that we’ve crossed our path with our soulmate- except she is not. I remember it happened to me in August 2010. I had just taken a bath and stood in the veranda combing my hair. There was a girl coming to our neighbourhood with whom I had been texting for some time. I was yet to wear my best clothes when my neighbour brought her to my place and she peeped. I have a terrible memory, but I remember, she was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white shirt. She had curly hair. That night, I could not sleep, and for the next two years, I wholeheartedly pursued her, then she started to fade away.
The phase of settling on a job
This happens in the mid-20s after we’ve changed too many jobs and settled on the fact that by running here to there was doing more damage to us. At this point in time, even if we change jobs, we don’t change the kind of job we do and the rate of changing jobs slows down significantly. In our mid-20s, we are burdened with more responsibilities comparing to the early-20s, and that is perhaps why we slow down with time.
The phase of losing friends and planning start-ups
These more or less continues throughout the 20s and happen simultaneously. Most of our friends in schools and colleges we see for the last time when we go to schools and colleges on the last day. We lose more when we or they go out of the places we grow up together for jobs, education, or any other reason. Our friend circles continue to shrink, yet, we have a few friends, and as long as they are there, we continue to plan start-ups. Most of these ideas are never discussed more than once or twice, some are discussed for more than that, might even see a few activities, but fail and we settle on the regular jobs. In our case, we planned to sell products from Nagaland on Amazon, running a YouTube channel on Indian history, creating blogs, publishing a collective school magazine taking a number of schools etc. That being said, I am not implying that there can never be a successful start-up.
The phase of investing too much emotion in the wrong person
The probability of this happening is relatively lower, but this is still a repeated phenomenon observed in many of those in their 20s. For me, it happened in February 2018 when I was pulled in the midst of a dancing group at a wedding party. I had just been out of a serious relationship and she appeared to me like an island where I could swim to and catch my breath, and get back to normalcy. Things escalated fast and in few days we were meeting every other day and kissing every other day, unaware of the fact that I was one of the variables in her life and she always had one constant, and the constant guy didn’t/don’t have a clue about the many variables. One day she wrote a WhatsApp status, “I love you R.” I thought it was meant for me, only to realize later in life that her constant’s name also starts with “R.” She is smart, I can give you that. Well, I am writing too much about her and making it rather a rant against her, but you got the point, right? For more details about her, wait for my novel which I should complete in the next 20 years. Also, care less about the story and more about the heading.
The phase of “settling down”
Settling down is actually an adjective rather than a verb. Settling down is a feeling that we ought to have by the time we approach 30s, according to our family and married peers. This is when most of our female friends have been married, having kids, a number of male friends have also gotten married and buying properties, expanding business. We are burdened with more responsibilities and seeing the changing lives of our friends, we get a feeling inside of us that in the midst of all, we are somewhere lagging behind, and though how much we rebel, there’s a small part of us that want to get the feeling of “settling down.” We get filled with insecurities because we are staring at the lives of others too much. The basic formula of arriving in “settling down” is “secure job + financial independence + marriage + house.” Even though we may not be ready for marriage or are not compatible with the idea and think a house is a worthless investment, we cannot get the idea out of our head. With approaching 30s, the feeling only gets stronger.
Finding the one
Finding the one and finding the so-called soulmate are distinctly different. When we find the one, which can happen any time in the 20s, we don’t get the exciting feeling that we assume. Rather than excitement, we feel secure in their presence and we don’t care about wooing them or being well-dressed in front of them. Sometimes I feel, finding the one is one of the ultimate goals and one of our ultimate achievements in our 20s, but that doesn’t mean 20s is the only time we find them. In fact, a huge number of people find them beyond their 20s. It is their arrival that matters, not when. And when they arrive, we know that they might not be perfect and according to our expectations, but they fill us with strange completeness.
Have I missed out anything? I am quite sure I have, and therefore, this post will continue to get updated.