"What's the Point?": The Pressures of Growing Up

I was meant to publish this article weeks ago, which ironically sums up the point of this entire essay. I turned twenty this March, and, much like every year, I wasn’t feeling great about it.

I’ve always had this sort of anxiety when it comes to my birthdays—or rather, ageing in general. I’m overly cynical, and always have been. Even before I was a teenager, I’d complain about getting older, losing time, and not wanting to grow up. Of course, back then I didn’t want to get older because I didn’t want my homework to get harder and I didn’t want to be like the boring grown-ups I saw around me or on TV. Being twenty isn’t old, I know that, I’m not demanding a tiny orchestra of violins to play for me just because my age no longer includes the word “teen” in it, but it’s still somewhat daunting.

I see almost everyone in my generation share the same feelings deep down, none of us want to get older, and I suppose that’s because the world is so much more different, and quite frankly it’s becoming something we’re not excited to live in.

For starters the world is literally dying. The planet we live on is becoming increasingly more toxic and inhabitable, and that’s something that hangs over our head. Sometimes I’ll be reading an article or watching a news bulletin that shows me all of the facts and statistics about the world and the countdown we have until it’s all over, and it makes me question the point of living.

Getting older in a world that’s about to end isn’t a concept that brings joy to my mind and it only reinforces how life doesn’t slow down, and we’re running out of time. However, this isn’t a piece on global warming, as much as I could rant about all the terrible things we’re doing and what we need to do to create change—I want to talk about being young, and having to leave youth behind.

I’m twenty years old and I panic almost every day about what I’m doing—or rather what I’m not doing. I’m twenty years old and I haven’t got a definitive career plan? I’m not financially stable? I’m not settled down in myself or with others? I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing.

All I have is ideas. Sure, I know where I'd like to be, and what I want to achieve but I have no clue how it’s going to happen, or if it’s even possible. There is an increasing pressure for us to have achieved everything at a young age, otherwise we’re too late. We are bombarded with stories of childhood success and we’re left thinking that if we aren’t where we want to be by the time that we’re eighteen then we’re failures.

There’s this vast grey cloud of anxiety that hangs above us all, and it throws us into a spiral that’s hard to get out of. Things are harder now, and they’re going to become harder. It feels like everything has already been achieved and done for the first time, so what’s the point in trying?

This mentality is so unhealthy, but it can’t be helped, and I know so many others can relate to it. Perhaps it’s fuelled by an already pre-existing depression and I’m struggling to find the motivation to keep going, but it’s overwhelmingly scary getting older and still feeling like you’re stuck as the world just passes by. Life doesn’t wait up, yet I can’t see myself catching up.

I love daydreaming, I think that’s where I go wrong. In my head, whenever I’m listening to a particular song, or the weather is a certain way, I feel so assured that everything is falling into place. The version of myself that I control in my dreams has accomplished so much, and I plan my achievements at a million thoughts per second. In my head it’s so easy, I’m doing everything I want to and more, and sometimes those moments where I indulge myself in a false sense of reality are what keep me going—if I can imagine it, surely, I have the capability to make it real?

That's the only form of encouragement I can afford to give myself. If I lose myself too much in those daydreams, then it only hurts more when my imagination cuts out, and I’m brought back to reality. In my room, late at night, deadlines looming, unfulfilled to-do lists, and no sense of direction that I can follow to ensure that my fantasies can become a reality.

We're a dreamer generation. Not in the same way as our mothers and fathers though. We don’t necessarily dream of just glamour, riches, and things beyond our comprehension. Instead, it’s the arguably mundane things we dream of. A steady paying job that we can balance alongside our studies, being able to afford food for every meal of the day, not having to worry about the impending threat of war, hoping one day we’ll take control of our world and end injustice and discrimination…there’s no time to imagine luxuries that we don’t need when we’re not even sure we want to carry on living in a world that is continually destroying itself.

When I was younger - admittedly I still do this now - I had this technique I’d use that’d help me get out of these moments of existential dread and anxiety. Whenever I was nervous for a test or interview, or when I was so heartbroken, I couldn’t move, or if I couldn’t see myself moving forward -I’d just picture the future. I could just imagine myself walking down the road an hour or two from those stressful moments and I'd start to feel better—I’d say to myself “nothing lasts forever, the good things definitely don’t. Therefore, that means the bad things can’t last that long either.” A slightly pessimistic reasoning I suppose, however that’s just how I think—and given the current status of the world, pessimism is more of a safety net than a melancholic outlook on life. It’s exhausting though, having to picture the future as a way to endure the present, and when negative thoughts such as “what’s the point, the world’s dying anyway” and “who even cares, this has been done before” seep in, the motivation to carry on and peruse our dreams gets all the more harder. In fact, the motivation to do anything just becomes more difficult. Completing my degree, trying to write a script, going for an audition…it’s hard to see the point, and it’s because we’ve been so beaten down by the current state of affairs and the pressure put upon us to succeed before the age of twenty.

When these thoughts seep into my mind, it’s hard to break free from them, yet it’s important to remember that success doesn’t have a sell-by date. Arguably, one can have their greatest success posthumously, so why must we as young people constantly put ourselves down for not changing the world or achieving our personal goals when we’ve barely been alive? It needs to stop, for our own peace of mind. We need to start being proud of ourselves for the journey that happens before we reach what we see as “success”. Getting out of bed, attending that lecture, going to that shift, making that train, exploring that new place, reaching that deadline—these are all factors of life that help us progress further, and they should be seen as such.

So what if someone did it first? So what if that person is closer to reaching the goal than you are? It doesn’t matter. Life is such a personal experience that we need to start existing for ourselves and not for the purpose of comparison—that is our greatest downfall. It’s easier said than done, but at the end of the line, we’re going to make it. Looking forward a couple of hours, days, weeks—maybe even years—we’ll be where we need to be, and perhaps that’s the greatest amount of optimism we can amount to as we struggle to see beyond the non-stop passing of time, but it’s important that we maintain that mindset.

I want to stop seeing every year as a failure just because I’m not where I want to be—every day that goes by I’m getting gradually closer, and that’s what matters. The naive expectation that things should “just happen” simply because we want them to is toxic for ourselves, and it prohibits us from seeing that we are in charge of what happens—no one else. We can make it happen, and it doesn’t matter how long it’ll take, as long as we surround ourselves with those who inspire us to become more determined—we’re going to be okay.