Millennials And Launching Into Adulthood: Why We Can’t Find The Starting Line

 

Launching. Taking off. Starting fresh. The first day of the rest of your life. The beginning of the “next chapter.” We hear these things when we graduate, begin a new job, move to a new city, start dating someone or get married, or on the flipside, quit a job, break up, etc. Instagram is littered with pictures commemorating these moments, after which we imagine that everything will change. We will suddenly “begin again.” We will feel like a new person, if not actually be a new person.

I’ve written in my journal, dream journal, word document journal, social media, and an article, about how graduation is an artificial denotation which has no real bearing on our entrance into “adulthood” (which is what, again?). Graduation is not magical. In fact, something I’ve learned over the course of being in the world outside of school, is that nothing really is (except love, but that’s a whole other essay).

I subconsciously thought that my psychic state would drastically change when I graduated from high school and college; allowing me to be ready for the next chapter. I drew a thick line after both of those days, in a desperate attempt to organize my life and the myriad feelings accompanying these events. What happened instead was I felt alone and confused.

I missed my “old life,” and when the old life would collide with my “new life” it was disorienting. The melancholy of feeling suspended between two worlds I wasn’t a part of overwhelmed me and made it hard to function. A similar thing happened when I moved to LA, and it also happens to me every time I go through a breakup or enter into a relationship.

What I didn’t realize before, is that there are no lines. Change is not something you can force. Time and space are not what we think they are—immutable, static, easily understood. Remember when you were a child? When did that end? When you turned thirteen? When you experienced a traumatic event? When you began or ended high school or college?

For me there was no one moment that I can point to and say, that’s when it happened. It took millions of minutia, spread out over years, and eventually somewhere along the line I didn’t feel like a child anymore. It certainly didn’t happen on the day of an “event.” Events are when your circumstances change perhaps, but your soul doesn’t always follow. It has its own clock, and certainly is not concerned with these corporeal occasions and signifiers.

Life, to me, seems less like a timeline that appears in a history textbook, with chapters indicating when certain people were born and died and when wars began and ended, and more like a long strip of film, folded in on itself, around and around. The past and future can overlay the present in ways we are sometimes aware of, but often not.

The past is not over or done haunting you when you think it should be, and the future sometimes whispers in your ear, disguised as inspiration or fear. It is one long, serpentine configuration without distinctions, and with thousands of frames incrementally piling up until you have something you can look back on and call a life- with a beginning, middle, and end. In the midst of it, though, nothing makes sense.

Another conception of time I’ve found to be liberating is found in the book I Love Dick (10/10 would recommend—honestly just stop reading this article and read this book instead). In response to a piece of art which depicts the passage of time in a linear, understandable way, author Chris Kraus says that, “…our smarter selves find greater satisfaction knowing history as we understand it is really just an avalanche of garbage toppling down.”

The widely held view that events happen one after the other, one at a time, is not entirely wrong, but it places importance on clear, public change-moments, and it leaves out all the unseen simultaneity that life contains. As a species we are always reordering and organizing our collective and personal histories so we can better understand, and hopefully, learn from them. We do this to feel safe; in control.

However, on the other side of safety is suffocation. How many times have we made fun of someone for not having it together when it’s “time” they should have it all together (whatever “having it together means”)? How often have you punished yourself for not being where you think you ought to be at a certain age or after a certain amount of time, screaming “LIFT OFF! LIFT OFF!” but the spaceship is firmly on the ground, bound by gravity and poor craftsmanship.

I’ve found that holding myself to external standards of growth did absolutely nothing for my happiness, creativity, or ability to be a good person. Instead I found myself paralyzed, watching 14 hours of Gilmore Girls a day, and feeling wretched.

I took a class on War and Peace at the end of my freshman year of college. I don’t remember much, as I got mono two weeks into the quarter. To be honest, I only read 150 pages of that damned book, but there’s one thing Professor Morson said that must have penetrated by illness-addled mind, because I come back to it over and over.

There’s a scene in which the character, Nikolai, is out hunting with his dogs. They come upon a wolf (as you do in Russia): “At that moment Nikolai saw only that something was happening to Karai—in a flash the hound was on the wolf and they were pitching headlong into a gully that lay before them…that moment…was the happiest moment of his life.”

Nikolai’s happiness did not reach out and tap him on the shoulder. He didn’t experience this moment on his wedding day or a day of importance, but by being in the present on a normal day, and doing something he’s done a thousand times. He attained what we all (or at least I) thought we would on the day of or soon after a “launch date.” The irony is that Nikolai doesn’t know he has experienced this. By truly being in the moment, he isn’t having any meta-thoughts. He isn’t performing happiness. He just is.

“Launch dates” are ultimately arbitrary, but they aren’t irrelevant. They offer us the chance to reflect deeply, express gratitude, take a nice photo to remember it, and get too drunk with our parents. What happens when these dates roll around is to celebrate them. Put ‘em on Instagram or whatever. But don’t be surprised, upset, or hard on yourself when nothing “happens.” Actual joy is occurring within you, on the off days, when no one is watching. You are always launching. Every moment.

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Natalie Houchins is a graduate of Northwestern University, with
degrees in Theatre and Gender & Sexuality Studies. She is a writer and
actress based out of LA, who is perennially homesick for Austin, TX.
She currently spends her free time hiking, watching Battlestar
Galactica and resisting the Trump administration. For more information, visit her website: www.nataliehouchins.com.