We are brought up with TV shows, books, and movies, all showing an idealized version of growing up. When we’re in our late teens and early 20s, we’re trained to think that we should be carefree and exploring the boundaries of reality and violating our own personal comfort zones.
Who really lives like that? When I was 18, I joined the army. When I was 19, I got married. I worked and worked, and by the time I was 25 I hadn’t completed a single semester of non-language college. I realized when I was 27 that I had missed something, something that everyone is brought up to expect. I had not had a wild time, I had not done anything without worrying about consequences, since I was in high school.
My rebellion included finally casting off the bad marriage that I had been too stubborn to stop even though it had been an obviously bad decision made in lust and immature emotions. I also re-started the 3-part story I had begun a decade earlier. I became heavily involved in graphic design, albeit in an unprofessional capacity. My friend Joe told me that I had to be true to myself, and being a workaday drone for the army while stuck in a loveless marriage and denying myself the companionship of my oldest friends was not true to myself. To make myself non-miserable, I had to evaluate what was important to me, and try to make me happy. If you aren’t happy, how can you be good for anyone else?
What form did your quest for lost youth take? Was it simple, was it life-altering? Have you done it yet, or are you one of those freaks from 90210 that actually had a “normal” adolescence and young adulthood? I’ve not met one yet, although some of my students a couple years ago sure seemed like TV characters…
current_mood: thoughtful
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