Life Begins At Twenty
I often think that life begins at twenty. I know that this phrase has become somewhat of a cliché, though usually referring to thirty or forty, and intended to jokingly sooth the pain of a middle-aged birthday-boy-or-girl who has come to realise that life is now half way through. I believe that the first twenty years of life are practice years, an educational period that can be partially re-sat if one should fail. We practice relationships, first with a small family group, then with friends, and more people, and then with lovers. We go to school to learn the ins-and-outs of life before we are unleashed upon the world in a non-educational sense for the first time. We do stupid things and mess up a lot, but the slate is wiped clean, at least mentally, at twenty. Once the puberty of the teenager years has developed our bodies, and the schools have filled our minds, and when we have practiced communicating with other humans enough, then we must enter the twenties and put our skills to the test. Everything changes from twenty onwards. Sure, you might have already had a job, a girlfriend, a life. You might have a car and a million in the bank when you hit your twentieth year on earth, but things are different now. That girlfriend you’ve got: she’s no longer just your teenage sweetheart, she’s your adult partner. Your relationship is now that of an adult, and you’re both part of a bigger world. The clock is ticking for both of you, and you both have decisions to make. Neither of you will live forever, and you certainly won’t be ‘young’ for long. If you want kids, you’ve only got twenty or so years left; if you want to do anything at all, you’ve only maybe got forty or sixty years left at most. Relationships take this extra dimension when you both want something different, and most won’t survive. When you get a job: this might be the job you work until you retire. Sure, they say nobody stays in a job for life these days, but maybe they will. Maybe you will. Maybe if you want to be president someday, it’s already too late. Nothing can be put off too long. The teenage years were a preparation for the life you want, so now you’re in your twenties you better start following up, because you don’t want to turn thirty and still be chasing that goddamn dream. In the twenties life has begun to take shape and there are no more preparation classes. We can’t spend the next twenty years preparing for our life, we have to go out there and get it now. And that is why the mind develops as crazily in the twenties as the body developed in the teens. We’re gonna fuck up a lot, and we’re gonna suffer the same embarrassment and humiliation we went through in the teens. We’re gonna realise we should have worked harder earlier, and feel like we’re still working for something now, but maybe we’ll realise the all of life is a practice and a preparation for something that comes later. I think that all years before the twentieth should be referred to as minus one, minus two and so on. Twenty is the new zero, and twenty-one is the big kick off. |