Looking around your room, you find a hidden box you once made when you were just a child. Opening it, your eyes gleaming with curiosity and expectation, you recognize a single piece of paper folded inside. Holding the sheet, once white and now yellowed with age, a nostalgic smile appears on your face as you read the plans you had made for your older self.
As fanciful and intangible as our expectations might have been back then, the tendency to romanticize the ideal life we wish to build for ourselves is common at every stage of life. Curiously, our early adult years, the so-called twenties, are usually perceived by many as the perfect phase to get our wishes off the paper, once and for all, and accomplish everything we have ever dreamed of.
When it comes to adulthood, though, life is far from the settled picture we have built in our minds over the years. Both expectations and unpredictability are a constant dilemma we eventually face while trying to get not only our lives together, but ourselves as well.
Experiencing what is supposed to be “the best decade of our lives” under the misleading notion of fulfillment, shaped mostly by the outside world, might feel like carrying hopes that aren’t ours to carry. In this context, our twenties take on a different perspective,one that is much more about embracing a personal journey and finding our own way along it.
A Story Written Long Before
There comes a certain realization as we grow older: we are all inevitably shaped, in some way, by the people who were once part of our lives, whether their presence was permanent or temporary. Metaphorically, this feeling resembles a patchwork quilt, a bed covering made of small pieces of cloth sewn together into a wider one.
Just like this blanket, we are, as well, a patchwork of the people who have become part of our story. From family members to strangers we met by chance and, in the blink of an eye, became some source of personal inspiration, everyone has left a mark on us, at least once. As remarkable as it may seem, this has the power to shape the way we perceive our own reality.
Undeniably, most of what we know about life comes from the social circles we become part of throughout our lives. More than just a system that organizes our societal life, these circles perpetuate norms, values and expected conducts, each with its own particularities.
Some of these relationships are simply stronger than others. Naturally, those we cultivate in our households – the very first non-arbitrary social institution we get to experience – are the ones we tend to absorb patterns and expectations most deeply. While raising us up, these family members teach us what they believe is best for our upbringing, which can make us unconsciously assume that whatever we were once told is the “right way” to handle things.
When it comes to life stages, this dynamic is no different. Their influence can be found in the little things we internalize as we grow up: In the comments – “When I was your age…”, “By my twenties…”; In the questions – “Don’t you think you should be living by yourself?”, “Aren’t you getting married?”; In the disguised comparison between other family members – “Your cousin has gotten a promotion!”, “Your sister just had a baby!”. Watching the lives of people we cherish and look up to, directly influences the way we comprehend how each phase is supposed to be lived.
Without even noticing, we fall for the misleading idea of having to keep up with a timetable that was once handed to us, one we grew up accepting as the ideal path to follow.
An Inherited Timeline
We happen to live with the concept of a “timeline” hanging over our heads incessantly. Like a shadow, its presence is rarely noticed until the sun highlights its shape. Then, when we least expect it, we suddenly realize that it has always been there. And much like a ghost, it haunts us as well, just as much as it surprises us. By a certain age during adulthood, this reality tackles us harder than ever before.
This phenomenon isn’t just an individual belief. American psychologist Bernice L. Neugarten, specialized in adult development and the psychology of ageing, explored this idea for the first time in the mid-20th century, when she developed the so-called “Social Clock Theory”. The concept refers to an imaginary timetable people use to measure the happening of major life events.
Bernice argues that this “social clock” is both culturally shaped and age-based. In other words, certain milestones are commonly expected to occur at specific stages of adulthood, as if they could be scheduled. Once settled, these life standards not only reflect the values of different societies and historical contexts, but are also perpetuated as “rules that need to be followed”.
This theory clearly manifests itself in the narratives we are exposed to through the people we are closest to and in the relationships we maintain throughout our lives. As we are constantly led to believe that there is a dominant, proper timeline for life events, we consequently internalize this misleading idea, and end up living up to the world’s expectations in an attempt to fulfill someone else’s standards.
What we don’t always have in mind is what makes “social clocks” such a complex phenomenon: they are shaped by different cultural and historical backgrounds. The things that were once expected of young adults in their twenties, when our parents were that age, don’t necessarily reflect the context we live in today and, hence, don’t apply to our own reality as well. Trying to confine our own timeline to a limited box just to live according to traditional conventions established decades ago, does more harm than any good at all.
In her theory, Neugarten also addresses the “side effects” social clock can have on us. By adhering to its logic, what we are endlessly looking for is social approval and the sense of belonging, a crucial feeling at this age, especially when everybody seems to be trying to find their own place in the world. To better understand this idea , Bernice highlights two key-concepts: being on-time and off-time.
As the name suggests, being on-time means fulfilling the milestones that are expected for us at the stipulated time for their occurrence. On the other hand, deviating this schedule by achieving life events earlier or later than expected, places us in the off-time category. Highlighting the latter experience, divergences often lead to a state of misjudgment, as we feel the clock ticking and time slipping through our fingers, unable to reverse the feeling of not keeping up and falling behind.
Sensing Life Through Someone Else’s Lenses
Measurement and comparison aren’t limited to the household “bubble” we grow up in or the social circles we become part of throughout life. On social media, content creators have found fertile ground for sharing their personal journeys through adulthood, and the twenties have gained a brand-new idealization. .
The more we scroll through our phones, the more we seem to find the same recurring narratives: productivity guarantees success; moving out of our parents’ house as soon as possible equals independence; getting our dream job position and achieving financial stability are pictured as attainable goals; buying a car as a must-have purchase right after getting our drivers’ license; finding “the one” and getting married to the love of our lives – and the list of milestones goes on.
Without even noticing, consuming different scenarios – built by people our age, from a similar historical context -, contributes to the establishment of a passive influence on how we should be getting our lives together. The online depiction of certain mileposts as a must worldwide rite of passage misleads us into believing that it is the only possible way to actually live life, and we forget how to experience this phase taking our own paths and time.
This belief isn’t based on concrete realities. In reality, they are perpetuated by the action of the so-called algorithm. Its mechanism relies on selectivity: as it can identify the kinds of content that generate the most engagement among specific audiences, it starts showing us whatever performs best. Irrefutably, exceptions are eye catching, and outliers – people who actually got to accomplish certain milestones earlier than the average adult -, stand out and overshadow others.
That is where the problem lies: when an exception has enough power to both reshape our perception of what is normal and romanticize what it should look like applied to our own lives, frustration and disappointment eventually settle in when we end up not meeting these made-up expectations.
There Is No Such Thing As Right Timing
There are moments in life when running back to the imaginative plans we once made for ourselves feels more inevitable than ever, especially when we come to realize that we might not be anywhere close to reaching the things we believe we want and hope to conquer.
As we get older, the picture becomes slightly more unsettling. Not only do we enter our twenties expecting to accomplish the whole world as soon as possible, but it turns out that expectation is a road that goes both ways – and so does the world expect even more from us. Most times, the sensation of being out of place emerges from the bottom of our hearts, and questioning whatever it is we are trying to do with our lives is part of the process.
One thing is clear, though: being 20-something-year-olds is much more about embarking on a single journey in which only you are the only one wise enough to guide your way through it.
Adulthood is the stage of life when, more than ever, every single decision feels just like a turning point. With each one, we get the chance to ponder what is best for us and, for the first time, we get to do things on our own terms and for ourselves, rather thanfor others. Although we constantly feel like satisfying people’s patterns is a duty, it is, in fact, nothing but a false pretense.
Our minds cannot be lured by the deceiving notion that we arefalling behind just because our lives are happening at their own pace – as they should. Indisputably, there are times when breaking away from the social clock and its unspoken chain of milestones is necessary, because there is a lot of peace of mind in freeing ourselves from this make-believe prison we call timeline.
Time is one of the things in life that is unique and particular to each of us. Attempting to theorize it like a math equation, a puzzle that needs to be sorted out step by step, according to the rules of a specific formula, is one of the biggest myths we face in our twenties. In reality, when it comes to life itself, there is no proper, universal way to live it. Figuring out sooner or later what feels right for us is what really matters in life,and understanding this fact makes everything fall into place.
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The article above was edited by Julia Delboni.
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