Growing up too late will only hurt us in the long run

 

Let’s say you’re an average 21-year-old. Hypothetically, you spend your weekdays doing online research, typing a half-assed paper on Kant, and rehearsing your main talking points for a speech. You spend your weekday evenings working at a grill downtown. On the weekends, you chill with your friends or by yourself with good ol’ Netflix. Despite a seemingly well-rounded life that you rigorously maintain – if you’re like many of us – you still live at home. You survive on Wheat Thins, string cheese and your mom’s homemade lasagna. You pay some rent – only some.

If the grown-up brigade came to your house at midnight tonight and said, “You have to grow up now.  It’s time to figure out your own taxes, how to make a deposit or down payment on an apartment or a car, pay your bills, save for retirement, and write a resumé – would you even survive?

The fact is, many twenty-somethings still live in the comforts of their childhood home. A couple decades ago, 16-year-olds couldn’t wait to drive, but more and more young adults these days are failing to find anything attractive about getting stuck in traffic on I-84 on a Friday night.

In that respect, should we be blamed? Should we be blamed for the fact that life is constantly an overwhelming race to succeed and triumph? Is it really our fault that we are hesitant to enter into another matrix in which we’ve observed the pain, disappointment, and failure that our parents and grandparents had to face?

During the recent recession, we saw fully competent adults with educated backgrounds be laid off and wind up on the littered streets – their matted hair blown by the same oxygen that the fortunate elite breathes. 

We believe “kids just want to be lazy” is too simplistic an answer, or rather, a misguided assumption. We are, indeed, afraid. Afraid that no matter what we put up front, we’re going to lose it all.  Afraid that no matter to whom we put our trust, they will shatter it. Afraid that no matter how soon we start, we will never finish.

We have lost trust in ourselves. The generation before us has lost confidence in us. In fact, so much that they teach us everything we need for a diploma because that’s how far they presume we’ll get.

Rewind back to third grade, when people in the “TAG” program got to get out of regular class to do something mysteriously sophisticated. The rest of us wondered: What is it like to be “Talented and Gifted?” So those in charge brutally invest in the best of us, and figure the rest are deadbeats. It’s no wonder so many young adults have lost hope.

The thing about life, though, is we have to start somewhere. Nothing will happen if we never try – guaranteed. The future lies in our hands.