Unedited Thoughts About Turning 25
In late October 2021, all of the passengers on my flight to Hawaii were required to fill out a questionnaire before entering the state. One of the questions asked, “What is your age range?” I naturally chose the correct one, 18–24. But at that point, me and my two friends that were sitting with me realized something: we are the last age of that subgroup. The next one was 25–39, I think. It might have been a bigger range, but in all honesty, I forgot. It was a comical, but slightly terrifying realization that I was about 6 months away from entering that next age range. We made jokes about how we were about to lose our youthfulness, since that next age range, 25-whatever, contains the timeline of “becoming an adult”. We all know that when we turn 18 here in America, we are legally considered an adult. But, at the same time, we all know that most people 18 years old are not actually mature adults. They are able to buy lottery tickets, to vote, be sent to jail, and change their names, but still have much to learn about life. When I was 18, I interpreted being an adult as being someone who is living on their own, maybe starting a family, & having to deal with the everyday grind of life. I was always under the impression that getting older means more responsibilities, leading to being less content. But now, looking at the idea of being an adult at this moment is incredibly different since then. I am confident to say that I am looking forward to entering this next imaginary chapter of my life.
This week I turned 25. I now get the benefit of not having to pay the “young renters fee” whenever I rent a car. I also have to start thinking about being on my own insurance plan next year when I turn 26 (what a weird age). Physically, I do not feel older than when I was 21 or 22, but it is undeniably true that mentally I feel like a totally different person. Does it have to do with the fact that the frontal lobe of my brain is fully developed? Science would agree, but personally, I cannot say for certain. Not one time have I had to report for jury duty since I started getting notices when I turned 18, so is it not fitting that I was finally picked to report this week? It has to be because of my age. But all jokes aside, it really does feel like this age is a theoretical page turn in my life. It might have to do with the fact that 25 is simply the start of the latter half of being in your 20s, a decade where some would say they turned into the person that they will be for the rest of their lives. It also might be related to now being at my first full-time job for 6 months, slowly gaining new responsibilities and the trust of my colleagues. Or maybe it is because I am in the planning process of moving out of my parents’ house? I can name a laundry list of changes in my life that have happened recently, or parts that are about to change in the near future. My significant other and I are finally not going to be in a long distance relationship this July. After 3 years of buying Megabus & airplane tickets almost every month just to see each other, we will be living in the same general area on a map. So, how about getting these gas prices down, please? I plan to buy my first car probably by the end of 2022, and it will most likely be a hybrid of some sort. I have reconnected with old friends, met new ones, and I cannot say for certain that it will end here. So, maybe it is a combination of all of these factors that makes me feel like I really am turning a corner. Or, maybe it is because I am writing down all of my thoughts and letting you read them is the reason that I most definitely am different now. Yeah, it’s probably just that.
There was not really a particular goal in sharing these thoughts. I am not trying to give out unobtainable knowledge or insight, nor do I believe that I am actually giving advice on anything. I guess the conundrum that I am trying to pick at here is that just because I believe I am entering a momentous era of my life at this particular age, does that mean I will continue to feel this way at other ages? When I turn 30, will I just ponder on where the hell did all of this time go and be that kind of person? You know what I am talking about, don’t lie.
One of the most frightening things in life is the idea of the unknown. Not knowing what is coming next in life is legitimately the complete opposite of what we want to feel (or maybe it’s just me). We are always taught to be prepared for anything, to always have a backup plan. Get A ready so that when B comes, you will know what to do next. That is what I thought being an adult would be like, to have everything figured out. But, the truth is that we will never have anything planned out the way we had it in our head. Remember when we learned about graphs and we had to draw the “line of best fit”? That line was the straight line that approximately shows the pattern of all the points on the graph. It always looked the same, steadily going up or down from left to right. I grew up thinking I would be able to plan out my life to resemble the “line of best fit”. It has become increasingly more apparent as I have gotten older that life will always be those random points on the graph that the line is supposed to estimate. I do not think that periodically checking on yourself to see how close you are to that line is unhealthy, but expecting your life to follow that line point by point is pure insanity.
Now, if you made it this far, I want to thank you for reading. I am almost never as open as this in normal conversation, and I definitely do not think this was masterfully written. I can only hope that reading my thoughts has you thinking about what momentous milestones are in the works in your own life, and not about how you wasted several minutes reading this. Even though this piece was the culmination of my feelings about turning 25, I can be certain that it will not be the last time I will be this introspective during my birthday week. According to the life expectancy of human males in America, I have about 50 or so more birthdays to feel like this. So if you think these thoughts were all over the place, just wait until I reach 75.
