It’s my birthday on Sunday, I am turning the grand old age of 24.
I’m not sure of the average age of my readers, but I assume some of you will laugh at that sentence. ‘Old’ in your mid-20s? Hilarious.
recently wrote about the ‘being in your mid-20s in the mid-2020s condition’, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. She writes, “[e]verything is changing, whether we like it or not. We can’t stay still long enough to set down roots. Why would we? Nobody can build a home on unstable ground. Who can commit when every job is a stepping stone, every address is a rental, every year might be The Last Chance to visit that country before it’s unlivable and before AI renders your job redundant?”I’ve tried to express these thoughts before, mostly with older people, and I’ve been shut down pretty quickly–whilst it’s likely these people have the best intentions, it never feels any less patronising. You know, the ‘it’s normal to feel lost at your age’ and ‘you’ll grow out of it’.
My friend told me birthdays make her feel behind in life. When I said I didn’t really relate, she kind of emphasised that of course *I* (me) wouldn’t feel that way. I’m ‘ahead’ in life: I’ve bought a house, I’m in a long-term relationship, I’ve settled down, and now my life is free to spend simply enjoying things.
In my mind, this couldn’t feel further from the truth.
I truly don’t say these things to brag. I say it to emphasise the fact that I’ve done all the right things, the things that look and sound right under the veils of modernity, but I don’t feel any closer to feeling settled, feeling okay with the future.
Let me put it this way: It’s like someone handed me The Manual For Life, and I studied it quite closely. Perhaps I side-stepped or skipped a few stages, but I got there eventually, I got to the last page where I could finally put the manual down and enjoy the fruits of my labour. Only to realise the booklet was dated 1953 and none of it applies any longer. Fuck.
Well, now I’ve realised this I can try something different, right? My partner and I discuss our future, and our goals to learn life's essential skills and live off-grid, grow our own food, work less, and finally feel at peace… But then, in the pit of my stomach, there's the feeling that maybe we’re waiting too long.
Which will come first, the time when we finally feel ready to change our entire lives, when we’ve earned enough money to do so? Or the time when the changing climate becomes unbearable, the economy begins to crumble, and the supply chains shut down?
Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. Maybe everything is going to turn out just fine. But I can’t say I’m confident green-tinted-business-as-usual is going to get us out of this mess.
Do I genuinely believe we’re heading for a world-ending climate catastrophe and we can’t do anything about it? No. Do I believe we’re heading for a crisis that will affect the way our entire society functions and will necessitate a whole host of changes? Uhhh, yes.
I’m kind of jealous of the times when climate change came in manageable chunks, you know, when we could worry about saving the whales or recycling. Now it just feels like everything is on fire all the time, but we’re still opening new oil fields and delaying our net zero goals.
Of course, I’m still a big fan of the utopian imagining and ‘what if’ mindset, but I’d be lying if I said my pulse didn’t quicken when I think about the potential futures ahead of me.
I think a good way to show how I feel is a conversation I had with a guy who sits at the later stage of his life (hi, Gwyn!) where he spoke to his thoughts of how he feels when he considers he only has 20, maybe 30 years left–probably a popular feeling for everyone 60 and beyond.
Yet I realised I felt pretty similar. I struggle to imagine a world in 10 years, much less 20 or 30 years. The future world of 2050 feels entirely unreal. I’m not sure how I can plan a life for a world I can’t even imagine, let alone believe in.
My brain has somehow gotten used to holding onto all this weird, scary, life-altering information, whilst being able to stay mostly positive and joyful at the same time.
I believe it’s because it’s pretty impossible to think about all the bad things all the time. Probably because If I truly did think about all of this for too long, I wouldn’t be able to pay the bills or buy myself dinner.
Sometimes I feel empowered to take on the world’s sufferings, feel I can imagine a better future for us all. Other times I want to run the other way, like all the answers I have found so far don’t feel enough.
I enjoy being positive, but ending everything I write with a positive spin feels a bit too solutionist for me.
I know I’ll feel okay again soon. I’ll remind myself I’m still human, one with a silly little monkey brain. I will push down the mental-climate-arithmetic and shaky morals for a day to have some fun. I’m excited to open my birthday presents, and I’m excited to order from my favourite takeaway. It’s okay to do this sometimes. It’s okay to be unsure of what the future will look like.
P.S. If you enjoy my writing, you can buy me a coffee to fuel my work.
I wrote a guest post about climate grief for the amazing
, I’ve been following Erin over on LinkedIn for a while and got ever-so-excited when I saw she was active on substack. In this post, I explored the five stages of grief and how we work through them in our experience with climate change.
I just caught up on this email - thanks so much for the shoutout! Honestly, I think feeling lost in our mid-20s is universal. You capture it well - no traditional indicators of shit-togetherness like property or relationships really seem to make us feel secure when the world doesn't feel stable at large. Thanks for sharing your feelings & thoughts. At least we're not entering an unclear future alone!
Mid-20s in the mid-2020s squad, ayy. I just finished writing a little response to a prompt that the org I work for provided ahead of our board retreat: "where do we want to be in 10 years?" I lamented how impossible that prompt feels, how I'm not sure what the world will look like or what I want it to look like, let alone what I want for myself. I wish I could just point people to this to explain why I have no clue how to answer that question because this is exactly how I feel.