If 50 is the new 40, and 40 is the new 30, and 30 is the new 20...then I'm a 14 year old?
Culture is in constant flux, but one of the more changed facets of our lives is the interpretation of age. Sure, it's 'just a number' after all, but most people agree that each decade has skipped back a few years on the 'traditional' scale of existence.
People who were marrying and having children in their 20's now have them well into their 30's or beyond. Women in their mid-40's-to-50's are now considered attractive cougars, flush with the money from their divorces and fueled by raging menopausal hormones.
It all sounds very attractive for someone in the later years of their life, like a chance card in a board game, almost the permission for a do-over of a decade or so of their lives. We crave eternal youth, and society has now deemed it acceptable that the activities and decisions made at an older age are given as much credence as those of teenagers.
But what does it mean, exactly, for someone just starting out their life? If 30 is indeed the new 20, than being 24 makes puts me solidly back in adolescence. Am I then allowed the freedom of being a teenager, absolved of responsibility for my actions and safeguarded by my parents?
It never really crossed my mind, but I do have several friends that fit that description. They've finished university, gotten jobs, started living their own 'adult' lives...but still behave like teenagers. Everything is about the next party, the next weekend, ditching work early and shagging anything in sight. What's scary is they now have the somewhat-disposable income to do just that.
Of course, there's no real planning for the future...but that seems to be what your 30's are for now.
Even my friends who have successfully navigated life out of their 20's are, in a sense, just getting strong footholds in their professions. That came with around 10 years of hard work, mind you, but what used to be the jobs and occupations of freshly-graduated students are now the positions 30-somethings find themselves in.
I just don't get what this all really means for me. Am I allowed to live the life of a teenager? Does society now expect so little from me that I'll not only have less responsibility but less opportunity to get my life started?
And what will it mean for me once I'm in my 60's? I really don't want to feel the burden of being forced to work into my 70's, but at the rate we're going both societally and economically, it's a distinct possibility.
While there are less stressors surrounding age, like 'settling down and starting a family' or just plain settling, I still feel more lost in an age-limbo than embracing my newfound adolescence.
I guess I'm just not old enough to understand.
1 comment:
Age-limbo. I like that.
I kind of feel like 2 people a lot of the time. A part of me hasn't left adolescence - the part that wants to just play games, eat, have fun, relationship inexperience; the other part of me is perhaps older than I should be - the "professional" aspect of responsibility, duty, commitment.
I would like not to relive adolescence but to rather find a balance in what should be my current age and experience what people my age "should" experience before that too, like adolescence, slips away.
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