It seems funny to speak of such things, maybe borderline elementary and childish, given that I am almost 30, that I have had my small track recorded of what I assume most to consider almost professional experience - being in the Peace Corps for the last 3 and a half years. I have never held a “real” job, like the kind that requires you to spend an exuberant amount of money on a four-year degree to prepare for and nobody has ever told me to watch out for this moment. We all just assume it will be as straightforward as our childhood, at least that’s what I did.
Growing up usually entails a containment inside the expectations and directions which are given to us to live by. We go from event to event with the step-by-step of how to progress from point A to B to C up until we graduate from school. Then we are set free from the hallmark of our youth and all of a sudden find ourselves on the outside of any particular containment and that freedom can be exhilarating. But that freedom comes with its responsibilities which are subject to the social measurement of progress and success. Without the convenience of instructions, we are left to our own cleverness to figure it all out. To pay the bills, to find an upstanding job with some upstanding company, that will make our parents proud, and our peers admire us.
And it is interesting to be aware of the emotions that you feel of not really measuring up to where society thinks you should be at when you turn 30. Our society says you should be at a rung or two above the bottom, having ascended from the entry-level, with your cheap, but in style H&M suit, and your used but not too used car, living in your nicely meager and overly priced studio apartment, mingling during Friday happy hours with your peers talking about how you all navigate this rat race to the top.
But not being there, one might be reminded of what standardized assessment feels like. Maybe we are the outlaws to the conventional…
But I am writing about this because I have been back from my Peace Corps service for five months and, frustratingly, the transition has been immense. The fluidity of being in this situation is a break in the routine of life and because of that, its inherent instability is both the blessing and the curse.
It is transitions in life which gives chance to the reiteration of the self but also, all can seem beyond grasp, and the complexity and shape-shifting of the day-to-day can be particularly overwhelming. But there is a transition which can be especially challenging – that of becoming an adult, one which I have admittedly been a late comer too and find myself square in the middle of.
It is that make or break period of life which, at best, our childhood instruction has only partially prepared us for. It is that raging river of life by which we stand at its banks being kept planted by anxiety but propelled by society to jump and be swept into the future.
But now having hit the challenge of adulthood by following the conventional model I find myself questioning whether or not I really want the conventional life. Is being inside the confound of the conventional really worth the sacrifice of taking the risk to live life how I really want to live it? I don’t think so.