Twenty-somethings: Choosing a Lifestyle

So many lifestyle choices, so little time.

A quotation from New York Times columnist David Brooks as the commencement speaker for the Brandeis University 2011 graduating class:

"If you are like most college grads, you will spend the next decade of your lives moving from city to city, school to school and from job to job experimenting with different careers and lifestyles," he said. "While you do this, by the way, your parents will slowly go crazy. Everything will be contingent and uncertain."

As Brooks adeptly points out, our generation -- that is, the people born basically in the 80's and now spanning the powerful 21 to 31 demographic -- is behaving differently. Part of it is a necessary reaction to the economy and the job market; we must be willing to move for jobs. We become transient. I, who was raised by transients who wandered a full 3,000 miles from their birthplace, have resolutely made myself a home in Chicago. I extol its wonders -- lovely parks, Midwest attitude, North Ave Whole Foods -- while continually discovering new joys (Lake Shore Drive running path) and setbacks (pee smell that permeates the loop in the summer). It's a big city and I'm young/hyperactive and I like it here.

I know in my heart I probably won't stay in Chicago forever. There's too much of the world to see. I may leave for a few years and then return for good -- I'd like that, actually -- but I belong to the generational mindset that home is where I charge my cell phone. It's that attitude that has allowed my peers and classmates to fling themselves around the world -- Amsterdam, London, the Ukraine, not to mention Atlanta and LA and Portland and so forth. This, our twenties, is the time for adventure and experimentation.

With my location settled for now, and as I hazily hobble toward some sort of career path as a grad student, Brooks would probably agree that I can focus on experimenting with lifestyles. It's like trying on costumes. Do I want to be a jock or a bookworm? Should I spend my lunch hour socializing or exercising? What statement does my hairstyle make? In what clubs and boards and music ensembles will my time investment be worthwhile? Is there a job I'd want where a tribal neck tattoo would be inappropriate; and if so, how about an eagle and the U.S. flag emblazoned across my back? These, I submit, are the important lifestyle decisions of the typical (that is to say, self-absorbed American) twenty-something: It's about how you spend your time and what image you're projecting to the world and how true a snapshot that is of who you really are. It's why we're all so obsessed with Facebook and Twitter; social media is another foundation for building and maintaining a reputation. It's like being in high school again, but with slightly less naïveté and hopefully better hair.

Why not?

This year I have two cousins graduating from high school, five siblings graduating from various elementary-age grades (my twin brothers just finished kindergarten!), and a handful of friends finishing up Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Meanwhile even more of us are still trudging along, sorting through term papers and auditions and manuscripts, the terminal diploma months or years or decades away.

But the toil is the equivalent of the journey, especially if that journey (studying writing) has no set destination ("writing the great American novel" is so twentieth century). So all there is left to do is apologize to our parents, promise them we're happy and well-adjusted and thriving no matter what lifestyle we're attempting this week, and ask them to pretty please mail just one more check. Last one, I promise.

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P.S. Completely unrelated, but you should check out my side-project with my buddy Kevin Rinz titled New Age Whitman. The summer blog/Twitter (@NewAgeWhitman) will culminate in a raucous drinking event in August. I'm really excited for the power trip that is ordering interns to reconstruct the eastern seaboard using empty Bud light cans. Follow along in the fun!