internal monologue

When I was ten years old, I thought I’d be a fully grown, all-knowing adult by age twenty. In fact, I remember thinking I would be just that. A tall, smart adult knowing “everything.”

Things didn’t exactly turn out that way.

I went to India after college in anticipation of learning some answers about the world, myself, and what I could do in the world. The experience was exactly what I’d hoped for and more, but it didn’t help to assuage the feeling of uncertainty of being an American twentysomething. I’ve done a lot of reading about this recently, and while this ethos is unique to our generation, it’s already a tired concept. Numerous books and articles and psychological works have already been published referring to the Millennials’ “quarter-life crisis.”

On the one hand, it’s a little ridiculous. Largely, the quarter-life crisis idea refers to middle-class Americans of my generation who were raised believing “you can be anything.” Now, it’s as if there are too many options but nothing is quite as we expected. Older generations describe ours as one with a delayed adulthood, in which twentysomethings are still trying to “find themselves,” and are getting married much later; many still live at home or are supported by their parents financially. They say that Millennials feel more entitled than previous generations, are always seeking for the next best thing, and aren’t satisfied easily.

In spite of the palpability of the delayed adulthood of our generation as a whole, however, I have no answers. I’m not sure how we turned out to be this way. For many (like myself), our parents struggled and wanted to provide us with better lives, giving us more than they had. In part, this meant keeping on the training wheels until the end of college, rather than gradually giving us independence – resulting in many man-child twentysomethings who didn’t know what to do when the wheels came off.

Living in India gave me perspective on one thing: globally, twentysomethings do not share this American zeitgeist of instability and vague sense of limitless possibilities. In India, this is for a few reasons – the imposed marriage timeline, fewer years of school, and greater responsibility in the house. From an early age, society enforces the notion of “marriageable age” and family members commence the search for their child’s spouse, whether or not their child is on the same page. Schooling is more grueling from an early age for those with higher education – aspiring physicians begin medical school at 18. Moreover, most Indian children are taught from a young age how to fulfill their role in their home (through chores or other responsibilities). All told, Indian adolescents are plunged into adulthood more quickly.

The ten-year old inside of me is wondering why I don’t know more right now. Why I feel uncertain about life, why I’m not on the fast track to achieving clear, distinct goals. On the surface, I appear to be – I have a professional job, I graduated from a reputable university, and am on a career path – yet, I cannot shake my uncertainty about ambiguous future. My mind is racing with questions. (Grad school? Different roles/companies/industries/cities? So many possibilities! When should I think marriage and kids?) Sometimes I wonder why I feel so unprepared for this decade of my life.

Then again, sometimes I think exactly this is how I’m supposed to feel right now.