Act Your Age
Last Saturday, I went to Eli Rallo’s New Jersey talk for her new book, Does Anyone Else Feel Like This? Her and Chris Olsen talked about connecting through empathy, Taylor Swift, recording audiobooks, and the obsession with age on social media – specifically, with youth.
People tend to want to escape every age. Kids want to be older so they can drive, teenagers want to go to college or leave their hometown, college students want to start working, people want to get married or have kids.
But once you pass a certain threshold, people want to start moving the clock back – to a time when some obscure muscle or part of their body didn’t constantly hurt or when they could party until 2 a.m. and then run a half marathon the day after.
I’ve found in my digital media consumption that the aspirational age has shifted for people my age. When I was in high school, it seemed like being in college or freshly post-grad was the best age to be.
Now that I have graduated, people on Instagram or Substack idealize the Sex and the City era of the 30s. Female voices dominating pop culture in their 30s like Taylor Swift and Alex Cooper seem to have found greater peace as they’ve entered this new decade. That makes a 22-year-old like, say, me yearn for the year I turn 30 and am suddenly at peace.
When you constantly idealize other ages, you won’t be satisfied with your life as it is. And if you reach that age that you’ve idolized in your head and don’t feel the way you thought you would, that creates more cognitive dissonance.
We all have age-based aspirations. Rallo says we create a timeline in our heads of what we should be doing at certain ages. For example, someone might want to be married at 25, have kids by 28, promoted to my dream job by 37, and retire by 65.
Being present often comes as an afterthought in our lives. It’s always onto the next thing – what am I going to have for dinner tonight, who am I networking with to ensure that I can move up in my career, what are my holiday plans.
Ayushi Thakkar says on milk and cookies that “we’re so busy trying to turn our current selves into future versions that we forget to make the current one livable.” She says creating five-year plans traps you inside the person who made the list rather than allowing growth and adaptation.
I am especially fantastic at not being present. Even if I’m not looking forward to anything concrete, my mind wanders with ease. To something I said in a conversation, to the possibility that I am not doing enough with my life.
That is especially hard in the post-grad era that lacks the structure I was so used to for almost two decades in school. I have a flexible schedule working part-time for my parents film production company, writing on my Substack, and applying to grad school while it seems like all of my peers are (a) working at their dream job, (b) getting ready to move in with a significant other, and/or (c) traveling the world and experiencing life-changing memories.
One thing that I try to remember is if you can’t change something, the way you adapt to it is the most important thing.
I can’t automatically get a job (... unless someone reading this is hiring, wink) or have my long-distance boyfriend return to the U.S. or all my high school and college friends move back to the same city. But I can be grateful for everything I have now – living in New York City with my cousins, FaceTiming loved ones and traveling to see them, and the free time that so many people wish they had to channel into writing.
Rallo talked about how she has to remind herself constantly to stay present, practicing it like it’s a muscle that needs strengthening. She says that instead of a five-year plan, she has a five-day plan.
While it’s sometimes a struggle to be 22 with a 22-year-old brain awaiting prefrontal cortex development, it’s also the age that so many other people want to be. It’s enviable for so many reasons – the possibility of doing anything you want with your life. Not that we should try to make others envy us, but we should learn to appreciate where we’re are.
Long story short, there’s privilege and beauty in acting your age.