Coming of Age

When I was seventeen I distinctly remember thinking that by twenty-two years old that the “fun” part of my life would essentially be over. Not just the fun I guess, but like the excitement of it all. The stuff you see in movies, with the girl you’ve known forever and your parents are best friends just quietly making bets on when you’ll both realize it’s been each other all along. That was probably the most frequent because it kind of disqualifies itself if you don’t have that situation in your life from an early age. Or bumping into someone you didn’t see in the hallway but when you look up and lock eyes its the beginning of something breathtaking or even heart breaking. Either way I just thought that I was going to have to settle for all of that being over. I think it was partly due to the fact that so many people have this unspoken timeline that they feel they have to follow where you graduate highschool and go to college or start a job and you have those four years to do whatever it is you want to do before you have to trade in the spontaneity that makes life so worth living for the monotony that most people steer themselves right into. I also think that it’s because no matter who you are or were, being young is glorified in the media, not just nowadays. The way that movies like the breakfast club and pretty in pink shine such an unrealistic light at what your life is supposed to look like in highschool. That it should be the best time of your life. And sure there are some that take place in college and the occasional ensemble movies where the characters are considerably older than highschool age. What I did notice though is there is always the character who is deemed the one who needs to “grow up” maybe he isn’t married or doesn’t have some steady career yet and his friends fault him for it and his arc includes finding love and a passion. When in reality I think that those are the envy of all their respective friends, when it comes to real life. I think the most empowering thing in the world is to be able to admit you don’t know what you want to do with your life. Yet, but more importantly to admit that it’s okay not to know. Now at twenty-four I feel younger than I did at nineteen which I never would have expected. It’s made me so excited to get older each year because of all the opportunities that life really has to offer. Of course it isn’t lost on me that I have friends who are starting careers, having children and getting married and I’m happy for them. It just really isn’t what I want, I think about the descriptions for the movies like the breakfast club and the common trend is “ coming of age”. Usually they’re in their adolescence, and if there is a movie about an older group of friends I don’t ever see the “coming of age” tag because I think someone decided that when you’re younger doing stupid things and falling for the right people at the wrong time or the wrong people at the right time is all part of growing up. But when you do those same things at thirty it’s immaturity. I honestly take it personally when people insinuate that I should give up a chance at my “ coming of age” years just because they might happen ten years later than they think they should’ve. Whether you agree or disagree we all know somebody that fits that mold and we all have our own feelings about what they should do. The beauty of it is it’s all in their control to each, for them to own.