SWEAT AND TEARS (PT. 1)
Your twenties are a coveted milestone. As an American teenager, you look forward to the additional freedoms you gain crossing into “20-something” territory. The age barrier isn’t just about unlocking the option to purchase alcohol. It’s about entering a new identity of responsibility and personhood. Your twenties are when you will get to live the lives of your favorite sitcom characters. You will tap into the years of physical and mental training that you’ve been participating in. The staircase that you’ve been climbing will lead to a hallway full of doors; each one an invitation to success.
I believe in all of the above. It’s all true! Those doors? They do exist. However, in the equation that brought you into your twenties, there is one fatal truth at work - time.
The doors all do exist and success is waiting behind each of them. It’s just that behind each door, the room looks different and the time it takes to reach success varies. Some are micro-studio apartments where success is right next to the sink and the bed frame. Other rooms look like an airport runway, where success is so far away it is the horizon. To be honest, they are all fine options.
However, in your twenties, the possibility of options is a shock. And that temporary “jolt” is about more than just where the staircase has led. While you were busy climbing stairs, time was working in all those other stairwells and hallways. Those that climbed before us - our parents, coaches, and mentors, were all working through their hallways. For those behind us, younger siblings, classmates, friends, were all climbing towards the same promise of potential.
It’s not that your twenties are full of false potential. Your twenties are just also full of other things.
And when your potential is meant with something other than forward-momentum, you experience redirection. Redirection is where your twenties start to lose their shine a little bit, because sometimes the new destination sucks. Redirection might mean something like… you need to start avoiding certain foods. Redirection can also be a monumental change in your family structure. The uncomfortable knowledge you gain in your twenties is that life, with all of the possibility and promise, is not infinite and it’s not going to end for just you.
(Disclaimer: Now, there has been a lot of 20-bashing here. It just so happens that twenty-ish years is enough time to see sizable changes. I expect that much of this holds true for every decade beyond 20, too.)