Why is it that everything and everyone around us “Roaring Twenty-somethings” is screaming commitment? Yet when it comes to relationships and settling on that one and only, our parents shake their finger and tell us, “don’t commit?”
So we’re the generation who has no clue how to balance a check book in the way that our parents do/did. You know, get out the pen and your registrar and sit there balancing your dollars and cents? That takes way too long. We need results now. We don’t have time to line up the tenths column, carry over numbers, add, subtract, sigh, erase, and do it all over again. We just pull out our iPhones, Blackberry’s, and other shiny, sparkly gadgets, feverishly punching away usernames and passwords, hit submit… and POW we have our balanced check-book in the form of a quick online balance. This beat goes on.
We’re also the generation that has been cast with a giant “I” on our Dolce and Gabana $347 ripped-to-shreds, but totally fashionable t-shirt- proclaiming “irresponsible.” You know, the ones that max out credit cards, take out gigantic loans, study abroad all over the world, often have no clue how our grandparents got here, how they worked their tales off to have our parents grow up to be successful, and consequently allow us to live without a single care, or what it may seem.
So in this scattered mess of being given so much freedom, being told since a youngster, “little Suzie/Johnny, you can be whatever you want to be” how the heck were we to believe that we were not unique and therefore the world revolves around us?! (Come on, you know I am kidding here). It was there, planted in that very sentence where our twinkling little eyes began to forecast who and where we are today. We are that group of “roaring twenties,” figuring out who we are. Some of us getting a stroke of luck and landing it big with companies we’ve been recruited into post-internships/college graduations, others being handed the keys to our parents’ business, and some of us, yes the ones with the twinkling flecks in our eyes still thinking that we can be anything… well we are the ones thinking we can live the fast life… spending on credit and living with a beer income and champagne taste.
So where does commitment come into all this you may ask? Our parents seem to be retracting on those whimsical and fantastical words… Oh no no, there is no way that we can just take off and decide to research in Southern France for a couple years, or dig through ancient remains in Egypt, scrutinize poetry and prose at Oxford… or much less “bee-bop” from city to city trying to cultivate ourselves and search for whatever it is the world is missing, that we believe we hold like a golden ticket in our back pocket!
Suddenly we’re being forced to commit… commit to that cubicle, commit to those bills piling up on our little kitchen counters, commit to those student loans, and car payments, commit to corporate hierarchy, wear that stiff white collar and skirt that falls approximately one inch below the knee (as mother told us), commit to the notion that we will be “committing” to this life of six am alarm clocks, clock-ins, clock-outs, half hour lunch breaks (that are spent sitting like a drone in front of our computer), and commit to the fact that we’ll be doing this (assuming we don’t get laid off in this economy) for the next fifteen plus years just to get to the place where we think we can actually be taken seriously and put our thumbprint on something!
We get it, we know we need to respect our elders, put in our dues, learn from those who have walked the same path we are about to go down… but is all this repeating of the same steps really a step in the right direction? Wasn’t it all those people who took a chance on borrowed dimes and credit, bee-bopped from city to city, following their curious mind into the ruins of ancient history, pouring through tethered dog-eared pages to find something that wasn’t previously found or read with the modern mind, wasn’t it those people, those “irresponsible” young adults who went against the grain and found something new, something worth finding and more over something where they could say “ah-ha!”
We are spinning fast now a day. We are trying our darndest (I really can’t believe I just said ‘darndest’) to keep up; keep our finger on the pulse of what will be and what we need to jump in on now. All the while, we’re trying to figure out who it is WE are, what we are good at, what our contribution will be, where it will be and WHO it will be with and for. We are trying to please our parents, please society, commit to those jobs that will pay those bills, that will push us out a little further into the direction that we hope will make us just one step closer to finding out what that golden ticket in our back pocket is. During this mass scramble, where we are being scorned for not committing, and not being more responsible the way our elders did (you know, when they were walking up-hill six miles in the snow, both ways, and when they were taking notes on slates of stone like the Flintstones?) we are trying to stake a claim, and perhaps even trying to hold onto something that we can grow with. Here enters the relationship part. I promise I have a means to this soon-to-be end!
We think we’ve found it… like we think we’ve found the perfect job! We come running home as though we have an A+ and a pretty sticker on our spelling test. We hold on tight to this find, put all our eggs into this basket and think we are in love, have found that soul-mate, and after all we are in our twenties, and isn’t that when our parents got married? So why is it that with all this committing to society, to paying bills, to finding one job and putting your life into it, that when we think we’ve found a person to commit to… our parents tell us something along the lines of ‘the world is your oyster,’ now get out there and don’t settle, you’re too young to be thinking of those things. WHAT?!
I guess it must be the one thing that really is and can be in flux. It is your heart; the one and only thing that can’t really be controlled by the ominous Big Brother. Maybe our parents really are onto something. Maybe they wish they could get back into their irresponsible twenties and just bee-bop from city to city. Could it be that we can commit to the workforce and commit to being a good citizen, and let our hearts run irresponsibly? Is that where we find balance? It doesn’t seem possible to separate the two. Could it be then that they shake their finger at us when we want to proclaim love from a mountaintop because they want more for us, see the potential of where we can go… perhaps believe in the twinkling flecks they placed in our eyes when they said “You can be whatever you want to be.”
So don’t stop at your first chance for love, don’t take time to even slap a Band-Aid on when you fall flat in the face of love, just keep going, run that course, and when its time, when things line up…when you discover that golden ticket, then will the planets align? What comes first is all I can seem to come up with…commit to your heart or commit to your profession…and can the two be synonymous?
-RW
