When you have to start an article with something like ‘readers of a certain age…’ you know you’ve begun to NO LONGER be part of the foremost strike group of the young brigade. Advertisers still have you in mind yes, but corporate boardrooms have already begun strategising in order to lure peeps younger than you.
You were once there. Full of innocent hope, ready to take on the world and not knowing how to run a washing machine? Your trips to the doctor were perhaps for routine check-ups and nothing scary. You spent money like there always was going to be more. And you sucked as hell in managing daily life outside of job and partying.
You are now in your mid/late thirties. And that’s the ONLY thing that’s changed.
You still are bad in your daily stuff. Money-managements is….well Haha! You still take shopping therapy to drown your insecurities and take solace in imagining that there are thousands like us who are still ‘adulting’.
Most millennials (like me) will definitely relate to this because such is life for most of them still. These people, born roughly between 1985 and 1999 are well past the legal definition of being an adult but they are still ‘adulting’, the buzzword indicating Millennials’ horrific inability to do simple things which, just a generation ago, were implicitly considered life skills everyone had. But in case of Millennials, the horror turns to celebration as each little victory in this department is celebrated on social media.
Millennials came to their senses (have they?) and grew up during the period technology went through a phase of its most prolific growth. And unlike previous waves when it largely remained a plaything of the ‘haves’, the social element of info explosion this time suddenly brought millions on the grid. The exclusivity of everything was suddenly lost. Everything was out there and very well preserved.
Ever heard your parents describing their lives as if they were made of different, distinct phases? You studied, got a job, got married, had kids and so on? Could this have been because the very symbols that marked a particular time in their lives (music, movies, news) were almost instantly and irretrievably relegated to being a memory in the past and this structured life with the aforementioned reference points was the only way forward?
I’ll make it simpler. A college-time heartbreak in our parents’ lives, associated perhaps with a particular song that came out at that time, quickly became a distant memory as the song fast became unavailable due to limited means or limited circulation.
As time went on, the fading memories instilled the need to move ahead and understand life in refernce to the run-of-the-mill reference points (marriage, kids etc.)
Compare this with what Millennials have today. A nostalgic tune is readily available as if it released yesterday.
Many who drowned their teenage angst in Linkin Park songs can relive that moment, that 20-year-old state of the mind, even today. And this is how they’ve been celebrating all aspects of their lives.
Linkin Park is just one example. The point is about tech-driven ability to readily recreate magic of yesteryears. Something that stokes the memory can be just anything. The ability to relive the moment now is the key. The fleeting sense of being forever young brings forth a certain assuarance that there’s still a lot of time.
Is this the reason why Millennials will always continue to give themselves time? For me, in 2023 today, the music scene of late 90s and early noughts is a matter of today. The times have never faded. For someone else, a Millennial, the ever-fresh evocative memory may be related to fashion, another thing that can readily be explored today thanks to immense database on the internet.
The opportunity to assert individuality has grown now like never before. Everyone from whatever niche has a chance to build own tribe and stay floating in that blissful ecstasy. Nobody is alone (so to speak) and there is always space to create our own reference point to live life our way.
So perhaps, still struggling to manage life outside this sphere would remain a defining characteristic of Millennials? Would we run washing machines only when there are no clothes to wear? Will we always be a little reluctant to rein in our splurges?
If yes, then we will still be ‘adulting’ even at 60.
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