Twenties, what the hell is going on?

I do not remember when I grew up, when my dreams converted to daily tasks in my TODO list using the Pomodoro technic to save time.

When did I started counting my time, making plans, thinking about money and realizing that when the teacher asked me back in 2010, “What do you want to be when you grow up” and I answered “An engineer”; now is the moment to become one. I am the adult that child was talking about.

At first, it sounds depressing, but when you think about it, you see your life as a movie.

As children, we wrote the scenarios with ambition and courage while imagining that our adult version would become a superhero and achieve them all.

But now, as adults we are living in that movie either alone or with a random cast chosen by life.

However, they did not tell us that those tiny bright brains with a lot of dreams and happiness, or maybe desperation to be in a better place, gave the “execution task” to more great intelligent minds with some magic aka mental illness. Alright, to be optimistic, we will call it great minds with just extra logic and more measurement to what it takes to actually do things we want to do (wink).

As children, we observed our realities and put a future goal to fix them; some of us had terrible families, so they decided to find that love in someone in “the future”; others were poor and decided to be rich in “the future”, maybe they had everything, but they wanted more freedom in “the future”…

We postponed all our happiness to “the future”.

However, that future is a bit complicated and weird.

Let’s say it starts in our twenties, or at least that is what the world says. It is when we look at the movies and actually feel like the events are familiar or watch a teen drama and feel like the cast is silly and young.

When we started giving a chance to old music, we used to skip on the radio and suddenly get surprised that it is the best thing we have ever heard.

Spoiler alert: We start relating to the lyrics.

It is when we go to the children’s toys section and laugh about how amazing it would be to buy something for that dreaming child; well personally I still sometimes buy cups / stuffed animals for my inner child XD.

It is when you start losing those permanent people in your life, cry like a baby but then accept that not all people are meant to stay, and it is “life”.

It is when you realize that there are at least two types of people in this universe, the ones who are lucky to achieve those dreams with someone in a collaborative cast because their scenarios are matching together, and the ones who get to choose between their goals and finding love, especially if it is a degree or a career path that takes both time and effort.

Now going back to the title, are the twenties the time to be lost or find ourselves, to fall in love or to be rich, maybe all of them or none of them until the thirties? Are you really waiting for a response? Would this article exist if I knew the answer? (Duh)

Wait, do not go yet; I still have a tool to figure it out someday; it is a thought in my mind as a girl who finished the first season of her twenties. “I take one year as a season in my twenties life’s movie hihihi.”

Those children who wrote our lives made a scenario to put us in a safe place, to feel complete and help ourselves or others. They believed that we could do it. Even if our minds had changed from blindly optimistic children, we still have the chance to be what we want to be if only we plan a strategy toward those goals using our adult brain but execute and work on them as that happy children.

Most importantly, remember that thirties do exist, and we do not have to get our life figured out in 29 because time is relative, and some significant pathways take extra time to flourish more.

And concerning love, we can not go to the streets and hand someone a child and tell them: “Hello please love her/him/them cuz I don’t”, but we can love that child and fix what childhood broke until a plot twist happens and we find a matching collaborative cast as well, just do not wait or give up on that child.

This is the summary of my twenties S1, not an absolute truth but just an opinion that I am sure will change in “the future” I wonder what is yours? And which season have you reached?

With love, Oumaima.

Thank you Moyosore Olopade for inspiring me to write this article after reading yours on chaos in our twenties < 3

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