Dear 19-year olds,
So I know for some of you, the world's your oyster. You've got it all figured out. Everything seems to be going okay. For some of you, you're just taking it slow. One day at a time, while others bulldoze into your future, working round the clock, just the way people bulldoze into the platforms during rush hour. Some roam around aimlessly, trying to find their purpose of life. I guess whatever the age, we're always trying to find some purpose in life.
You're trying to establish yourself to an identity which should be fully functionally by the time you're 21, so that you can be an "adult". You try to build politically, socially and culturally apt ideologies to follow through when you will be an fully functional "adult". You're at that at that blurred line between adult and teenager, where everything you do, affects how you're seen as a teenager and haunt you as an adult, but never as an individual at present. Everything that seemed unaffected to you a year ago, you suddenly need to have opinions on. You're at that precarious stage of either totally wasting your last teen year, or living it outrightly. Either way, it's your last year of being a teenager. I suppose, being twenty isn't as different from being 19. Twenty isn't spelled twenteen and that's all there is to that.
19. That means you're mostly in college, juggling a social life with academics. That is something you'll be juggling either way in the years to come too, but at 19, it's the starting point. There's more pressure to keep a buzzing social life so that you don't feel you wasted your youth or "teen" years. There's a ticking clock, reminding you of being a "teenager" and all the amicable stupidity that comes along with it. The relationships in our lives seem to be more complex whether it's family or of the opposite sex. But that's unavoidable and continuous in the years to come, but relationships just get messier as mentality gaps get wider.
You start to see the world with a little less flowers and more dirt. You start to call out the bullshit in all the things you believed in a few years ago and pick bones with people who don't. You rather voice your opinion and bullshit facts, than agree you're wrong. We listen less and hear more. The overload of information thanks to the internet, is also an overload of anxiety of how truly revolting people can be. Wars are being fought, millions are dying and here I am wondering where can I get wasted with friends at night. It's a walking paradox, where we do truly care about issues but at the same time indulge in frivolous whims with the overload of information along with constraints of being social. Information where we truly don't know what to do with or act upon. Not to mention some people do act upon these causes, while we applaud in awe.
Some seem to have everything sorted out while others are in a chaotic rumble to figuring where the hell do they want to do? We yearn for freedom from our family. To be light from family constraints and to venture out on our own. We seek freedom but still depend on family to create our belief systems. Confusion is that one itch in your body, that never seems to leave.
You also start to come in terms with the fact that life will never go how you want and people you never thought you'd part with, you part. Your friend circle starts decreasing as your bond with the ones you have start increasing. You become ignorant of issues surrounding you, while our generation gets isolated and more lonely. Depression is a term you don't want to say, but personally understand in more one than one. To be indifferent and yet feel, to live and not exist, to be independent and yet dependent. To borrow a phrase: The unbearable lightness of being. To be or not to be.
Personally, 18-20 years is that age gap in which we try to form our identity for the age of being a fully functionally "adult" by 21. 19's an age of self-exploration, which can be polarising, but in this time and age? Name one issue that isn't polarising. That being said, personally I try to hold middle-ground to avoid heartache. My mother always said, "Everything in excess is bad" and she couldn't have been more right.
So in all, I'm just another 19 year old, stumbling around for some foundation to hold onto and get past to be an "adult". 19 is that stepping stone, where you can still be called a teen and pave your way to become older as you start to also see the world in a darker shade of grey than before. It's a lonely road as you part with being a teen and start being adulting.
Maybe you believe in nothing. Maybe you believe everything, but that depends totally on how you have self actualised as a person to be what you identify with.
So my dear fellow 19 year olds,
Live. Be happy. Question. Seek answers. Self-actualise. Explore. Create.
Most of all, be kind to each other. Support each other. Only you and I know what it's like being 19 and let's not make it harder than it already is. The world's crappy enough as it is.
PS: I swear I'm not this preachy in real life. Had a major writer's block and this is what I churned up. Hope you like it.
Until next time readers!
XXXX
So I know for some of you, the world's your oyster. You've got it all figured out. Everything seems to be going okay. For some of you, you're just taking it slow. One day at a time, while others bulldoze into your future, working round the clock, just the way people bulldoze into the platforms during rush hour. Some roam around aimlessly, trying to find their purpose of life. I guess whatever the age, we're always trying to find some purpose in life.
You're trying to establish yourself to an identity which should be fully functionally by the time you're 21, so that you can be an "adult". You try to build politically, socially and culturally apt ideologies to follow through when you will be an fully functional "adult". You're at that at that blurred line between adult and teenager, where everything you do, affects how you're seen as a teenager and haunt you as an adult, but never as an individual at present. Everything that seemed unaffected to you a year ago, you suddenly need to have opinions on. You're at that precarious stage of either totally wasting your last teen year, or living it outrightly. Either way, it's your last year of being a teenager. I suppose, being twenty isn't as different from being 19. Twenty isn't spelled twenteen and that's all there is to that.
19. That means you're mostly in college, juggling a social life with academics. That is something you'll be juggling either way in the years to come too, but at 19, it's the starting point. There's more pressure to keep a buzzing social life so that you don't feel you wasted your youth or "teen" years. There's a ticking clock, reminding you of being a "teenager" and all the amicable stupidity that comes along with it. The relationships in our lives seem to be more complex whether it's family or of the opposite sex. But that's unavoidable and continuous in the years to come, but relationships just get messier as mentality gaps get wider.
You start to see the world with a little less flowers and more dirt. You start to call out the bullshit in all the things you believed in a few years ago and pick bones with people who don't. You rather voice your opinion and bullshit facts, than agree you're wrong. We listen less and hear more. The overload of information thanks to the internet, is also an overload of anxiety of how truly revolting people can be. Wars are being fought, millions are dying and here I am wondering where can I get wasted with friends at night. It's a walking paradox, where we do truly care about issues but at the same time indulge in frivolous whims with the overload of information along with constraints of being social. Information where we truly don't know what to do with or act upon. Not to mention some people do act upon these causes, while we applaud in awe.
Some seem to have everything sorted out while others are in a chaotic rumble to figuring where the hell do they want to do? We yearn for freedom from our family. To be light from family constraints and to venture out on our own. We seek freedom but still depend on family to create our belief systems. Confusion is that one itch in your body, that never seems to leave.
You also start to come in terms with the fact that life will never go how you want and people you never thought you'd part with, you part. Your friend circle starts decreasing as your bond with the ones you have start increasing. You become ignorant of issues surrounding you, while our generation gets isolated and more lonely. Depression is a term you don't want to say, but personally understand in more one than one. To be indifferent and yet feel, to live and not exist, to be independent and yet dependent. To borrow a phrase: The unbearable lightness of being. To be or not to be.
Personally, 18-20 years is that age gap in which we try to form our identity for the age of being a fully functionally "adult" by 21. 19's an age of self-exploration, which can be polarising, but in this time and age? Name one issue that isn't polarising. That being said, personally I try to hold middle-ground to avoid heartache. My mother always said, "Everything in excess is bad" and she couldn't have been more right.
So in all, I'm just another 19 year old, stumbling around for some foundation to hold onto and get past to be an "adult". 19 is that stepping stone, where you can still be called a teen and pave your way to become older as you start to also see the world in a darker shade of grey than before. It's a lonely road as you part with being a teen and start being adulting.
Maybe you believe in nothing. Maybe you believe everything, but that depends totally on how you have self actualised as a person to be what you identify with.
So my dear fellow 19 year olds,
Live. Be happy. Question. Seek answers. Self-actualise. Explore. Create.
Most of all, be kind to each other. Support each other. Only you and I know what it's like being 19 and let's not make it harder than it already is. The world's crappy enough as it is.
PS: I swear I'm not this preachy in real life. Had a major writer's block and this is what I churned up. Hope you like it.
Until next time readers!
XXXX
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