a twenties crisis
and a cute comic
The Great Twenties Hoax
I was watching Nora Ephron’s When Harry Met Sally the other day, and two thoughts crossed my mind:
How is Meg Ryan’s hair always so perfect?
How is she—like so many 20-something characters—living it up at 21, successful at 26, and perfectly put together in a book-reading, party-going, everything-works-out-eventually kind of way by 31?
Somewhere along the way, we’ve been fed a lie.
Not because I’m a cynic (though, okay, I am), but because in reality, I either have perfect hair or feel great about my goals—never both at the same time. And if my 21-year-old self once romanticized her twenties as the defining decade, she probably needs to accept that nothing is going to plan—and maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason for that.
Wise people say, “Youth is wasted on the young.” I repeated that to myself, hoping I’d feel wise. Instead, I just felt stupid. And if there’s one thing no one tells you about your twenties, it’s that you will feel stupid—a lot. In fact, by the dozen.
Maybe that’s because adulting is one endless game of trial and error, and there’s no universal playbook.
Am I eating enough protein?
How much should I be saving?
Should I even be saving when I could be traveling?
It doesn’t help that, as ex-children, our comparison set used to be one Sharmaji ka beta. Now, it’s the entire internet. So even if I made a billion dollars today, I’d still look at Elon Musk and think, he has more.
And that brings me to the real question: What is fair game and what isn’t when it comes to making the most of this decade? What do people in their thirties say about these existential twenty-something dilemmas?
I could have asked real 30-year-olds. Instead, I went on Buzzfeed. Obviously. One said..
..but the same article also quoted
So basically, even the old folks don’t have a single answer.
Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.
Maybe they just winged it all the way and made it through.
Maybe I will too. Maybe you will too.
Won’t we? We will.
Until next time. :)