Читать книгу 20 Something Manifesto - Christine Hassler - Страница 48

I stood among peers wearing suits and ties, wineglass in hand, detached from the piano music and the sputtering jokes and conversations, hand shaking. The event was my first alumni gathering only two months after my college graduation. I recognized no one, and I made no attempt to try. Instead, I went in the men’s room and tried to understand who that person was I was looking at in the mirror.

I won’t be ridiculous — I knew it was my face. But the face, to me, was that of quiet desperation. This desperation had no single cause, but rather it seemed to be a concentration of causes. The stress from overloaded course schedules, the self-doubt from peer criticism in the classroom, the loneliness stemming from nagging shyness, insecurity, and parents whom I could never seem to please. But most prominently, my anxiety was not only over lack of understanding of who I was but where I was going.

At eighteen I wanted to be a screenwriter-filmmaker like Oliver Stone, so I majored in English and creative writing with a naive yearning for fame, attention, and praise. I never told my parents this dream because I doubted they would ever support me. When they found out my major, I could hear them whisper in the living room their doubts and their lack of faith in my career direction. So, with encouragement, rather insistence, from them along with my best friend, I added accounting as a second major.

The extra major didn’t allow me to take a single summer off, participate in-depth with any student organizations, socialize regularly, or give me the time to practice for the driver’s license my parents discouraged me from getting when I was sixteen. The workload became daunting, and I felt rushed and overloaded practically every quarter.

“I want to make it on my own, be independent from my family, be debt-free, happy, and successful. But I just don’t think I have enough life experience yet to know who I am, and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect myself to have it all figured out right now. But it’s hard not to compare myself to other people my age who do seem to know exactly who they are.”

School secretary, 23, serious relationship, Oregon

But in my senior year, I knew I wasn’t good at accounting and I was miserable. After a horrible quarter, I switched to the manageable but no more fulfilling marketing program. My grades staggered and so did my confidence. Even worse, the extra load and switch in majors diluted my concentration on my writing. I wasn’t reading novels, writing on a daily basis, or watching acclaimed films — the activities I believed made good writers and filmmakers. As a result, an inferiority complex developed. Before I knew it, I was thinking about law school as Plan B. I figured a Juris Doctor would be good enough to net me a form of the prestige, distinction, and wealth I desired.

This festive evening of mingling with strangers in the dinner hall, and me staring blankly at myself in the mirror, was also the night before I was emailed my LSAT score. But I wasn’t looking forward to finding out, and I probably wasn’t going to law school, because despite the six straight months of preparation, and multiple aborted attempts, I once again believed I choked under the pressure of the real thing.

I am missing something anyone with a sense of direction possesses: faith and confidence in oneself. But how can I possess these when I don’t know who I am?

After emerging from the restroom, I scanned the room for company. I drifted from gathering to gathering, searching for someone as confused as I was. I am lonely, sexually frustrated, insecure, shy, detached, discouraged, and fearful for the future. I have this feeling like a clock is ticking.

I don’t know how long I’ll feel this way about life. I’ve heard so many people tell me that this stage of life is just a beginning and it always works out eventually. Career counselors and parents tell me that I’m just in a phase, but oversimplifying these tangles of self-doubt and loneliness is easy for them when it’s my life and not theirs. But if this is a phase, a temporary time of confusion, when does it end?

If you are still in the Basic stage on the Self-Awareness Continuum, you can probably relate to Phil’s level of frustration over not knowing who he is. This ambiguous, uncertain sense of self feels like a big roadblock, and leads to frustration and panic. Trust that it is a phase that you will evolve out of — and the more self-accepting you are of exactly who and where you are, the faster this phase will end. Cultivate compassion for yourself while you are in this process of self-discovery; consider yourself “under construction.” You are more than what you do or have. The emotional quagmire of this stage dissolves as you learn what makes you you — independent of any roles you play or labels you may have taken on.

“All too often as a twenty something the significance of who we are recedes in the background because of the expectations of who we should be or ought to be for the culture. I’ve found peace by creating a counterculture inside myself that I’ve defined.”

Graduate student, 24, serious relationship, Missouri