Being twenty something

A friend recently sent me a forward on maturing in life…Sharing part of it…

As I mature…

I’ve learnt that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.

I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people are just assholes.

I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, they are more screwed up than you think.

I’ve learned that we are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities.

It was a forward that touched a chord (unlike the hundreds that irritate you). If you thought only teenage is a difficult time, then wait till you get into your twenties. That is the time when all your notions of right and wrong, all your beliefs of happily ever afters and picture perfect bonds get shaken up. Suddenly you wake up to a world of new realities, which are far different from the idealistic picture education gives you of the world.

I have spent most of my twenties away from home studying and working. And having to juggle changes within and around you all on your own is something all my friends would agree has been the greatest challenge. You want to succeed at everything you do and nothing seems to happen as fast as you want it to. Some of your dreams get fulfilled, some become nightmares and some are broken irreversibly. You want to be serious and you also want to have fun with your new found freedom. You want lasting relationships and you want material success. It’s a decade when you are left wanting and trying and you look at people who have crossed that age and wonder if you will ever get to be as self assured as they seem to be right now (but like the forward says, they could be screwed up too).

It’s a time when you could start to make your own decisions and not believe that parents always know better (and sometimes they don’t). And when you do make your own decisions for the first time, chances are you might make many mistakes and as you are no longer a child there comes the responsibility that all of us non-celebrities have to take. Its probably the first time in your own life that you really, truly get out of the crowd and get to know yourself and your mettle. And you could either like yourself or hate yourself.

Well you might ask what is the point of all this. Just that as I sat back and looked at the last five years, I realised, I am no longer the dreaming school girl from Rajkot. My friends have changed, my likes and dislikes are different, my bond with my parents is different, my take on love and commitment is different (read no more Mills and Boon anymore :-P) I have done things I never thought I would do both good and bad and at the end of it all, I know I have learnt a lot. I still am not the kind of self assured that some of the people I know are, but I know I am on the way to it. And I just wanted to tell all my friends in their twenties that some day we shall all sit back and laugh at these crazy times and look at them fondly like our parents right now look at the era of 60’s and 70’s. We shall all get together someday and toast to these days that showed us how much shit we could take and yet give back our best. Happy 20’s all you guys out there. We, the freaks, shall inherit the earth J (SIMC 07 tagline).