People love to romanticize your twenties. Older adults always say things like, “I wish I could be 20 again,” as if this decade is supposed to be the easiest, most exciting time of your life. And in some ways, I understand why they say that. Being 20 means you’re young, relatively healthy and technically have your whole future ahead of you. But what people don’t talk about enough is how confusing it actually feels to be this age right now.
I’m a college student, which means I’m in that strange in-between stage of life. I’m not a kid anymore, but I’m also not fully settled into adulthood. When I was younger, I assumed that by the time I reached my twenties, things would feel more certain. I thought I’d know exactly what I wanted to do, where I was going and how everything would work out. Instead, it often feels like everyone around me is just guessing and hoping for the best.
Part of this feeling might come from nostalgia. Our generation constantly looks back at the early 2000s and 2010s with this strange longing, even though it wasn’t that long ago. Sometimes I’ll hear a song from middle school or see an old Disney Channel clip online and instantly feel transported back to a time when life felt a lot simpler. Back then, the biggest problems felt manageable, and the future seemed like something exciting rather than something uncertain.
Social media doesn’t exactly help with this feeling either. It makes it incredibly easy to compare your life to everyone else’s highlight reel. One minute you’re scrolling through TikTok or Instagram and suddenly it seems like everyone your age is traveling the world, starting businesses or somehow already has their life completely figured out. Even when you know that what you’re seeing is curated, it can still make you feel like you’re falling behind.
At the same time, the expectations for people in their twenties haven’t really changed, even though the world has. There’s still this lingering idea that you should graduate college, find a stable job and start building a life for yourself fairly quickly. But the reality is that everything, from housing to career paths, feels less predictable than it used to. A lot of people my age are just trying to get through school, figure out what they actually enjoy doing and hope the opportunities will eventually show up.
Despite all of that, I don’t think feeling lost in your twenties is necessarily a bad thing. In a weird way, it probably means we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. This is the first time in life when we’re really responsible for figuring things out on our own. That’s intimidating, but it’s also part of growing up.
Maybe one day we’ll look back at this time with the same nostalgia we feel for our childhoods now. Even if everything feels uncertain in the moment, it’s still a chapter of life that’s shaping who we’re becoming. And maybe the point of being 20 isn’t to have everything figured out yet, it’s just to start learning how to.