Thirty Years Young

Andrea Lavinthal and Jessica Rozler,authors of the recent girly crisis manual Your So-Called Life,call it redo-berty or thrisis. Clunky words,but a wholly understandable idea the crisis that usually occurs between the ages of 26 and 32,during that final push into adulthood. Obviously,this is relevant to a tiny subset of privileged navel-gazers,but theres enough of those to make it relevant.

When you know youre firmly planted in your life and that some fantasies are now insupportable. You realise youve put in too many years at your job to throw it up for graduate school. Its not a fun gig any more,its your career. Or when you know youre too emotionally invested in someone to consider any other options. Or when you resign yourself,not unhappily,to the idea that this is the city youll be living in for a while,for good. Its all real now.

For those of us who dont make purposeful,energising choices,and have just learnt by going where we have to go,these are moments of real cognitive dissonance. You never thought youd end up buying consumer durables,or paying attention to the stock market,or being a picture on a wedding album,or feeling protective about your parents. But there you are. And after years of that loose sense of possibility,when things suddenly click into place,its pretty bewildering. After all,looking adult and having adult accoutrements neednt mean you feel any different inside.

There was a big,buzzy New York Times article last year that argued for a whole new stage called emerging adulthood. If the usual markers are leaving school,leaving home,financial independence,marriage and children,then its taking people longer and longer to get there. Or they scramble the signposts,choosing some and discarding others. Theyre testing the dimensions of their appetites and desires.

But what happens after that,in your thirties,when youve already made some headway on all fronts? Youre facing the consequences of decisions you made earlier in the post-college years whether youve gone about setting and accomplishing targets or painting yourself into a useless corner. Either way,youre wistful. Thats the dilemma its not a regretful mid-life crisis,its the sense that youre faking it,pretending to be grown-up and feeling nothing like one.

Youre stuck without a real navigational guide. Your parents who shouldered up to responsibility at all the right times and maybe didnt have to self-actualise every second of their lives,are telling you to get on with it. But their concerned advice doesnt square with your life,or with what your friends are actually doing.

Your friends dont exactly help either. After the comforting lockstep of school and college,your peers are now scattered across different stages. Some youll never catch up with,some wholl never catch up with you. The once-nutty friend who is now a tornado of worldly ambition. Or the friend who got married early and produced a photogenic passel. Or the friends who floated in the amniotic fluid of university for years. Or the friend who seemed to be doing nothing,till he unveiled some creative project that clearly took ferocious dedication. Lavinthal and Rozler divides this demographic into four types the premature granny,the Forever 21,the sudden onset yuppie,and the early decision adult,married with a mortgage. And whatever youve chosen,be sure you will confront all of these forking paths on Facebook,from parties to vacations and new houses to baby pictures.

But theres more to that thirties feeling than just whinging about what might have been. For many people,its bracing and invigorating,to rely on themselves and know that their actions will determine their lives to some extent,rather than the terrible flux and uncertainty of the young. Youre working with better material,with firm clay rather than viscous goo.

Its also a solid knock at the self-importance of your younger self you know it doesnt really matter that much to the world,what you do with your grand future. Theres a lovely poem by Naomi Shihab Nye,about afternoon drift and lassitude,that ends with these lines:

Yesterday someone said,It gets late so early.

I wrote it down. I was going to do something with it.

Maybe it is a title and this life is the poem.

amulya.gopalakrishnanexpressindia.coms