things you realize when you are in your mid 20s
7 Things You Realize When You Are in Your Mid-20s
"Life is just a bowl of cherries"; your mid-20s is the time when you begin to catch on the ironies of life. It is the time of reinventing yourself, and you are actually in the process of it all the time, but on a very subliminal level. In this Buzzle article, we discuss 7 things that you will come across when you are in your mid-20s.
"Nobody knows anything when they are in their midtwenties."
Remember those times when you would lust after the latitude that your elder sibling enjoyed? All you wanted at that time was to grow old enough so that you were allowed to do everything that you thought was really cool. If only your tender and naiveté-soaked noggin' could fathom the countless stupefying things that happen when you actually become 'elder'.
Life isn't all that awesome and cool as it's cracked up to be, and this realization is as hard hitting as if someone dumped a bucketful of ice on your head; you are jolted (which doesn't necessarily force you into action but you get several such jolts and you take labored breaths BECAUSE YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING WITH YOU!), numbed, and are totally nonplussed. You feel as if your life is some kind of an ambiguous code that keeps getting more entangled and hazy and doesn't want to reveal its true purpose.
Your mid-20s is about all these realizations. There will be times when you would be beguiled to think you had your epiphanic moment; you now know what's your true calling or you have found the key that unlocks all mysterious of your life, but wham! That's just one of the transitory things that promise to be a 'big bang' but soon languish as a 'sad whimper'. Life.
In the following paragraphs, we discuss many such things that we come across when we are in our middle 20s.
― Matthew Quick
Lollies make life
It goes without saying that our entire lives pirouette around money, and your mid-20s is that period of your life that undergoes huge, crazy, and drastic changes with respect to the money factor. This is the phase where you seesaw between poverty and employment and experience both ups and downs of it very intimately. Some of your friends will be well off on the financial front, and this will only make you marginalize your existence, but trust us, likening your life with someone else's, money-wise, is not one of the smartest things one can do. Career difference and work satisfaction are operative words that are very conveniently forgotten.
With so many things happening around, it's very difficult to figure whether the money should have a meatier role in your life or not let alone being able to establish a steady relationship with it. But whatever be the case, remember that you have got a dream, it doesn't matter if you can't see it clearly, but money will help you shape it, so it's always wise to save it.
Feel like a lost ball in the high weeds
Your mid-20s will give you a lot of those moments where you have a dramatic breakdown and look yourself in the mirror for hours in utter state of dilapidation. You don't know for how long you are going to keep doing what you are currently doing, neither you are decisive about what you REALLY want. You may get yourself into something, but it's like being on an oar-less dinghy that keeps you afloat but will make you feel adrift. Where is that uber confident YOU from the college days that was so cocky sure what it wanted? Huh??
Friendship is now a difficult affair
Gone are the days when befriending someone was as easy as breaking pie crust; now you are old and you realize that making friends amidst personal chaos and mounting career crisis is very difficult. You are no longer living vicariously through your friends experiences but having your own, and that leaves you with no time to connect with your existing fellas, forget about making new ones.
Indecision is the mother of bad luck
Indecisiveness is a word that can be added to your profile. While you are given enough leeway to decide what you want to do with your life, but you will most likely be billing and cooing with uncertainty. You are very ambitious and will be ready to devote yourself to THAT ONE THING that makes you happy but you can't find it what that is. You feel shackled by the fear of failure and so you keep retreating to your complacent shell because you feel you will wind up in the same place where you started. There may be a part of you that wants to take risks but that part of you that doesn't want to paralyzes the former.
You too can feel pangs of nostalgia
You become painfully nostalgic, for you now know that those carefree and frivolous days are not going to come back. It's very natural to pine for those glorious college days, remembering all those years when you harbored dreams, but dreaming in college and actualizing that dream are two different things, it doesn't look that romantic now as it used to. You become that uncle Peter who would often become nostalgic after two drinks and reminisce his good old days in the country. Next time, you can join him.
You will have a different perspective about dating
This is not to say that you will lose your interest in dating but you would rather expend your energy into someone who is genuinely interested in you. If you are already in a relationship, then you are more likely to ask yourself questions like "Am I happy?", "Do I really want to be in this for a long term?", etc. You will start detaching yourself from a relationship or abstain from establishing one when you know it is not going to do any good to you.
Work is not that exciting as you had imagined
Remember that day when you galumphed insanely in the house because you got yourself a job? You will try not to remember it since it threatens to spoil that once held perfect notion you nursed so optimistically about jobs in general. The real job world is not that picture perfect but huge, shapeless, murky, haphazard blobs of paint that are exponentially abstract. :-/
As someone who is going through the same tumultuous and 'emotional spewing' everyday I can tell you one thing that I have realized just recently―every 20-something mortal is saddled with humongous weight of the aforementioned thoughts and depressing feelings. So, while you are unable to find your way through this quagmire, try to environ yourself with people who bring joy in your otherwise miasmic life (dramatic, right?); try having discussions with other equally lost mortals and see how and what they are doing to make things seem a little less obscure.
If you are feeling angry about your situation, then don't just hold it inside, but bring it out, channelize it, and give yourself that push for which you have been whining about. Take baby steps toward your goals; don't worry if you don't have any well-defined goals as of now, begin with something as small as promising yourself to exercising regularly or putting curbs on your junk intake; set your a** in gear. Always remember that something or the other will work, all you need to do is to just keep trying. CHEERS!