when i was 24...

I’ve mentioned The Girls At Work in probably too many posts. Since we’re all around the same age, and in other obvious ways our lives overlap, our lunchtime conversations provide a lot of fodder for this blog.

Mostly we talk about our roommates, and pets. Then we talk about what we do for fun, and lifehacks for doubling up professional dress with casual wear, and working out (or not). We talk about money (mostly, how much we don’t have). We talk about food: fitting grocery shopping into our busy schedules, eating healthy, eating out.

On Monday of this week, while we slogged through all this heavy problem-solving, The Other ‘ara (we get mixed up all the time at work) told us how her skinny, blond cousins, young parents in their 30s, talk about being 24. “Our twenties were a blast,” they’ll say, “but let’s be honest-- we might be less fun now, but we’re not that much less fun. And we sure don’t miss living paycheck to paycheck, living in scary places because it’s all we could afford, going out every night...”

So I started thinking: how will we look back at these lunches and our standard fare, our weird roommates, hangovers, being perpetually on the lookout for the loves of our lives? And I thought about a comment my Gramma made, how she appreciates my blog because I actually listen to the wisdom of my elders, and incorporate it. And I remembered how much I love hearing other people’s stories instead of just writing my own all the time, and I thought I’d better ask some more experienced people to recall being our age.

This post goes out to The Girls At Work, especially Sara.

I’ve also mentioned before how my mom’s experience has been different from mine. The major reason being, she was married at 22, and had me at 25, and so the time I’m spending now getting to know myself, she spent figuring out “ourselves” -- the We-factor. Being married and being a "new adult."

“When I was 24, Papa and I did everything together. We didn’t have any money... But everything was an adventure.

“And then when I was 30, I had three kids. When I was 29, Maria was born. And when my mom was 29, I was born. So that was significant to me. It felt like things were coming full-circle.

“But I didn’t feel grown up until I was about 45. Life was still an adventure and I felt like everything was so new. Now I feel like... I heard this lady say in the store that she wished she was young again but knew everything she knows now. I like the wisdom that I’ve gained and the insight that I’ve gained over years of experience.”

And now, she’s starting to take new kinds of opportunities to get to know herself. In some ways, I feel like we are on a similar page now. It is comforting, though, to hear that she just started feeling grown up recently. Maybe that means we’ve actually got some time to figure things out!

“Figuring things out” is a theme that came up over and over again. More specifically, “I hadn’t really figured anything out back then.” I was talking to J about a friendship I’m frustrated with right now, and he recalled an old friend he couldn’t even speak to for years after a bad roommate experience in college. “I eventually figured it out,” he said, “and so will you. But it will probably take you half as long. Hopefully.”

I was pleasantly surprised to get a similarly clueless impression from one of my most influential college professors. It is strange, no matter how many times I hear it, to learn that “grown-ups” I so deeply admire as capable human beings have or have had their clueless moments. It’s comforting, too. And it often makes me respect them more.

“24. Given that it was half of my life ago, I don't recall that much about my emotional state at 24. I was living in Japan teaching English and happy to be meeting some really great people. I wasn't in a romantic relationship. I read a lot, mostly novels and stuff about Asian politics. I learned how to ski. I intended to keep moving and traveling.

“I didn't know it at the time, but I was making progress on figuring out who I was. Of course I also didn't realize that some big surprises were in store for me in that regard over the next couple of years -- the major wrong turns in my life hadn't happened yet.”

Reading this response now makes me wish I had dug deeper for “the major wrong turns”... But I guess that's a conversation for another day! This part is a little intimidating... What if we have some serious wrong turns ahead of us?!

On the plus side, I guess, we still have a shot at turning out as well as Tom did.

And maybe it just takes that long. My friend Emily, who I met while she was doing AmeriCorps in Delaware last year, is not really that much older than I am. But the way she talked about being 24 struck me almost as though she were a different person commenting on someone else a few years younger.

“So as a 32-year-old, I can't really speak for anyone else because everyone matures at different rates. At 24, I had the time of my life. I had the best group of friends and I had a sense of identity. HOWEVER, I was also extremely dramatic and immature. Every kiss was some epic romance and every hurt feeling was a betrayal. So if I knew then what I know now, it would be to be a little more pragmatic, a little more responsible, a little more sober and a lot less angsty. I thought angst was 'cool' and therefore never tried to grow out of it. I also cared way too much about appearing hip, together, and cultured. I didn't realize how fake it looked. But that's just me. I was extremely immature for that age. Like I said, everyone is different.”

So I asked, what was the catalyst that makes you look back so critically? What sparked the shift, and when did it happen? What do I have to look forward to?

“There was no ‘one’ thing that contributed to the change, but moving to California to be a couch- surfer knocked a lot of it out of my system. Just not living in a place where everyone understood me and enabled my quirky, youthful ways-- that forced me to grow up a lot and realize the difference between friends and drinking buddies, and other important lessons. Delaware was another one for similar reasons.

“But it's been a process and it's one that I am still in the midst of.”

I love that she boiled it down to realizing the difference between friends and drinking buddies. It strikes me as such a beautiful way to express something I’ve often heard about growing older -- that we learn how important relationships really are to our happiness, and, if we’re lucky, how to have functional ones. Distinguishing friends from drinking buddies seems like a pretty good first step.

So maybe we really just don’t “grow up” until we’re 45. But I wonder-- what is the catalyst? And how do we really know that we’ve done it, we’ve hit our peak, we’re grown up!

One of my dad’s best friends, Dan (my dad, also called Dan, was his best man back in 1986), both offered an answer to the “catalyst” question and threw the whole idea for a loop.

“Around the age of 24...I say ‘around’ since that was so long ago (I am 52 now)...I would soon to meet a young beautiful lady who later accepted my marriage proposal, after she said ‘maybe’ and made me wait for a few weeks! For me, finances were ok but certainly not great so there was some tension about finding/keeping the right job. I had gone back to college a few years after high school.

“In some ways, I think I thought I had things figured out fairly well but I didn't really focus on the little things. I had a job that I liked and my employer kept promoting me so I felt rather encouraged and optimistic. I do recall thinking from time to time about my parents who were in their early 50s. I wondered if I would be so stuck in a rut when I get to their age as far as career, family, doing boring church stuff, etc.”

Is this like me, now? What do I have to look forward to? Read on...

“Little did I know how much children change the picture!! Liz and I have five children. The first child was an adjustment, but the second and third not so much. I guess we already had gone through the initial adjustments/shock of a major lifestyle change with the first. We waited five years before having children, but it was all an amazing experience....

“Our fourth child was the one that really threw us for a curve. Not that he was a difficult child but more from the logistical point of having so many car seats and transporting four kids places was not easy.”

AHA! KIDS! THAT’S the catalyst!

I’m actually in a bizarre position right now where I’m watching J’s older sister and her husband with their new baby, and they seem pretty much exactly the same. That is weird. At the same time, she (the baby) is having a major, discernible impact on their lives, on their social schedule, their sleep, their role in the extended family. But if they weren’t grown up before, they’re no more so now. And if they were before, then, well, there goes that idea...

But wait, Dan’s not done:

“I can honestly say that looking back when I was 24 year old, any thoughts of what I might be doing or how life might possibly be now were nowhere close to how they have turned out!

"I have heard people comment that at my age I would be ‘settled in’ to routine and life would sort of cruise by or that I would begin to slow down after turning 50. Nothing is further from the truth! Life is busy. I still have four boys living at home. Three of them are teenagers and one 12-year-old.

“My ‘career’ is just beginning to launch off into the great unknown...and that is amazing and exciting. It's all a God thing! At age 24 I really did not know what my ‘passion in life’ was. I really didn't realize what that was until about ten years ago...in my early 40s. My passion is praying for people! That alone began a period of years of learning, failing, stumbling and grasping this.”

Things are new! There are still learning curves at 32, 48, 52! Things happen that are so unexpected and they throw us for a loop again and again, and we take wrong turns and make new discoveries...

Now, The Girls At Work and I, my classmates and my friends, are looking forward to getting our ducks in a row, getting our shit together, figuring things out. Having our own place, being married, making the salary we want and having our own benefits instead of living off our parents’. (In the meantime, Mom, Dad, Obama, we appreciate it and it really is awesome of you to share yours with us until we’re 26!)

5, 10, 25 years down the line, we will definitely have gained some perspective and some wisdom, but who knows what we will think about who we are now and what we are doing. All we can do is our best, and try to be happy.

Bring on the adventure!