Twenty-Something and Feeling Some Type of Way

The curtains open, and a slightly frazzled young man walks onto the stage and introduces himself as Jon, a musical theater writer. The spotlight shines brightly on him as he shares with the audience:

Lately, I’ve been hearing this … sound. Everywhere I go. Like a … tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Like a time bomb in some cheesy “B” movie or Saturday morning cartoon. The fuse has been lit. The clock counts down the seconds as the flame gets closer, and closer, and closer, until all at once —

You can hear the ticking and then a soft boom sound when he pauses. Suddenly, he sits at a piano singing in his apartment:

I have rejection letters from every major — and minor — producer, theater company, record label and film studio in existence. And in just over a week … I will be thirty years old.

“Oh,” I think. That’s it. That’s the punch. Why do I want to laugh out loud at the absurdity of the notion that you should be accomplished or have-your-shit-together by thirty while also cringing and feeling it in my chest at the same time?

Andrew Garfield playing Jonathon Larson

These are playwright Jonathon Larson’s words, played by Andrew Garfield in last year’s movie Tick, Tick … BOOM! based on the semi-autobiographical musical written by Larson himself. (You may know Jonathan Larson for his massively famous musical Rent, for which he won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize and sadly never got to see on Broadway.) The movie tells the story of the aspiring composer in New York City who is navigating friendship and love while anxiously trying to finish his musical Superbia and “make it” before he is too old. He feels the clock ticking as his thirtieth birthday approaches, and he worries that he’s undoubtedly behind, made the wrong career choice, and wasted his twenties.

Increasing the tempo of the beat and hitting the piano keys as hard as if they were drums, he continues,

Older than Stephen Sondheim when he had his first Broadway show. Older than Paul McCartney when he wrote his last song with John Lennon. By the time my parents were thirty, they already had two kids. They had careers with steady paychecks. A mortgage. In eight days, my youth will be over forever. And what exactly do I have to show for myself?

A pause.

“Happy Birthday.”

***

These days, the one-liner my twenty-something friends and I keep coming back to is “Gosh, the twenties are so weird.”

I guess we landed on weird because we’re trying to capture the push and pull we feel: we’re pretty independent, but most of us aren’t fully there. And, for those who have gone to college, it’s the first time in our lives that we don’t have a set path to follow; high school and college kept us on track and at the same pace as our peers, but then you graduate and you’re on your own to figure out what’s next. As my friend put it, “I felt like college encouraged me to be open minded and explore, and now [I feel like I’ve been] dumped off in the middle of the woods with no service.” There’s no immediately obvious next step, but most of us think whatever we’re doing should be pretty darn great and cool because everyone keeps telling us that the world is our oyster, and we’re only young once!

So whether it’s trying to decide which city we want to move to, figuring out we love or hate our jobs (or often some feeling between those extremes), learning how to budget and be real adults, or navigating the strange world of online dating — all while hearing lots of advice on how to live in this extraordinarily special time of life — the weird sentiment resounds.

My friends and I have been saying the phrase so often that I got curious if most people our age felt similarly. Naturally, as a Gen-Zer, I took to Instagram to poll my friends. I created a couple of polls to which a little under 100 people responded. I mentioned a few responses from my friends earlier, but to keep this from sounding like a statistic-heavy report, I included relevant polls in footnotes. (No, I don’t pretend to be a professional pollster — yes, it’s a small sample size with a self-selecting population — but the results are still interesting.)

As it turns out, there’s a lot of pressure put on this decade of life. To many, the twenties have become known as The Defining Decade.[1] My friend recently shared that it’s like we’re simultaneously being told to “get you shit together” (i.e., build your wealth, find a dream job, establish a good skin care routine, find your spouse) and also “live the absolute fullest, most fun life you can while you’re young” (explore the world, go on crazy adventures while you’re young and healthy).[2]

Charles Dickens may as well have been describing the twenties when he wrote that “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” In a word, it’s paradoxical.[3]

The twenties can be such a fun time of life. In the words of my best friend, “you’re young enough to want to do fun things and make spontaneous, spur of the moment decisions, but you’re also old enough to have agency to make them happen!” Other friends often talk about how they love creating their own routine, having their own space, falling in love, discovering new sides of themselves, and moving to big, shiny cities. It’s exciting; the world is full of possibilities and opportunities, and our optimism hasn’t been snuffed yet. Many of us are also child-free and don’t have the same level of responsibilities we might have later. The independence can be quite exhilarating.

And yet … lonely. Full of comparison and anxiousness. Everyone seems to be hearing what Jonathan Larson hears. That tick, tick, tick …

My friend recently told me that the uncertainty and comparison inherent to this stage of life, coupled with the ticking clock, feel downright crushing at times. “I feel like this is just me sometimes because so many of my other friends have it figured out, but not knowing what you want to do with your life and especially your career is daunting. I want to live in a bunch of cities, I want to do a bunch of jobs, and it feels like I need to figure that all out RIGHT NOW,” she expressed. “Time is passing too fast. Maybe it’s that the pandemic felt like it took two years off our early twenties but all of a sudden I’m almost 25 and I’m like wtf. I feel pressure like this is a special time that I have to optimize, and yet it’s slipping away.”

But my friend is not at all alone in feeling this way. I, too, feel indisputably, wildly behind. I’m not even sure where I should be, but I just know that I’m lagging. And, as my poll attests, most of us are observing our peers and feeling behind.[4] And just generally confused about where we are and where we’re going.

In her podcast “Grit and the Importance of Trying New Things,” Brené Brown has a conversation with professor and best-selling author Angela Duckworth about how they struggled in their twenties and got a late start to their careers. Angela said she was simply “miserable” in her twenties because of how uncertain and volatile[5] everything felt: “I think uncertainty is a generally uncomfortable state for a human … I was more miserable than I was at any other age because of, I think, the uncertainty.” And, as Brené adds, “the pressure is great.”[6]

It doesn’t help that society tends to project its ideals and romanticism on the younger generation: “It’s up to your generation to fix our mistakes/save the world/[insert unrealistic endeavor]!” “This is the best time of your life! Don’t waste it!”

It seems like many of us twenty-somethings, are, like Larson, asking, “ … and what exactly do I have to show for myself?” If figuring out a five-or-ten-year plan for a successful life or getting your shit together or living the most crazy, fun life by the time you’re thirty is the standard and the world is the judge, then that terrible ticking will keep you up at night. If you can’t show something for yourself soon, then what? In this way of thinking, the passage of time is terrifying no matter how old you are. Birthdays are not a cause for celebration but despair. The tick, tick really does feel like it’s approaching a boom!, an unraveling, an explosion — a cruel judgment.

***

So what exactly did Jesus have to show for himself on his thirtieth birthday?

Well, nothing of note, apparently, as the Bible is silent on this decade of his life. I find it ironic that I worry about wasting my twenties when Jesus didn’t start his formal ministry until he was in his thirties. We don’t even know what the Lord and Savior of the world did in his twenties. He probably worked his average carpenter job in small-town, backwoods Nazareth.

The world would probably judge Jesus’ twenties as a failure. And his life, too, for that matter. It ended on a common criminal’s cross. Crucified by those he failed to win over. Betrayed by one of his twelve disciples. Mocked and spit on as he drew his last breath.

But Jesus didn’t care about being “successful.” He didn’t have a five-year-plan. He didn’t fear the passage of time at all because the timeline he operated on was eternal. The ticking did not approach a boom! for death was not the end. He rose again, and defeated death so that we don’t have to. In other words, he freed us from the world’s standards of success because he knows they will kill us — if not literally, then they will kill our spirit. He created a new standard, one that breathes hope and life instead of despondency and death.

The world asks us, “what do you have to show for yourself?” and demands that we perform until we reach perfection. The world sets us up to fail, because the standard is unattainable. And so we hustle and watch our clocks with dread.

The Gospel tells us, in no uncertain terms, that we have nothing to show for ourselves (twenty-something or otherwise) — but it also tells us that this is not a cause for despair because we don’t need to have anything to show for ourselves. Jesus is interested in another question entirely. He instead asks us, “will you accept what I’ve already done for you?”

I don’t think Jesus is suggesting that we shouldn’t make the most of our lives on earth, or that the passage of time isn’t difficult, or that uncertainty is easy. He is, however, suggesting, pleading, that we not live in fear of the ticking clock. I’m twenty-something, and I have dreams and fears and a million questions. My life compass seems to change directions all the time. But his grace is all I need to show for myself. I am free to enjoy my twenties without a deadline of judgment awaiting me on my thirtieth birthday. A cause for celebration, indeed.