In the 1920's, America and parts of Europe experienced a blissful change in society, culture, and the arts. Women and minorities were making significant strides towards greater independence and equality, new technologies were surfacing, and fashion, jazz, and other art forms were blossoming like bossoms on pubescent girls. Not to mention, economic prosperity filled the air as more people were working and new consumer goods were constantly hitting the shelves to meet accelerated consumer demands. The people were entering a new age - breaking from traditions and being introduced to a wide array of new things and ideas. These were the "roaring twenties" and the spirit of these golden years was marked with exuberant optimism, excitment, and joy.
Some say your 20's should carry the same spirit the 1920's did. When people find out I'm 23, in addition to telling me how young they think I am, they always say something to the effect that your 20's are the best years of your life and that I should be "living it up". I don't disagree that I should be "living it up" (I think you should "live it up" at any age), but are they really the best years of your life? Let's think about this...
At the start of our "roaring 20's" most people are in college, typically within their last few years, right about to turn the ripe, legal age to drink.. Pretty good year - minus the waiting 'til 21 part. For most of us, we graduate college at or around 21 and then get violently introduced to reality AKA "The real world". Sure, for most of these years, we can get away with the skimpy dresses and getting wasted on Taco Tuesday, Hump Day Wednesday, and Thirsty Thursday nights - along with the usual Friday-Sunday weekend- but then when we wake up in the morning with throbbing headaches, something tells us we're not in college anymore, toto...
We realize we're actually adults with responsibilities that consist of more than just "Monday night meeting", lecture on Monday-Wednesday-Friday and a discussion sesson in Thursday. We find we've got mounding debt, either because we only got to go to college through student loans or we were persuaded into getting a credit card from a bank when we turned 18 and didn't realize we actually had to pay back the credit card company for all the cool things we used that tiny, paper-thin plastic card for, and to top it off - most of us have work Hmm.. exciting, kinda cool.. Scary? YES! Maybe I have a scewed perspective because this economy is almost as bad as the great depression that followed the 1920's, but is it 100X harder than you thought it would be to get a job these days? And, if you're one of the lucky ones that has a job, you're probably one of the only people actually working because you're the youngest and newest person on the "team".
Ugh.. these twenties sound horrible! Ha. But, despite it all, I guess we must appreciate the twenties because while we're still trying to figure it out, we make our own decisions, and we are allotted the chance to make our own mistakes. I'm 23, almost 24. I haven't lived most of my 20s.. but even in these 3 years, I can say it has been some of the most unmistakenly difficult, crazy, unpredictable, trying years of my life. (And we thought our teens were tough!) I realize it's all a process.. a developmental, learning process.. but when does the roaring begin?
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