The Mind of a Modern-Day Young Person.

Paralysed by the prospect of choice, bound by an abundance of possibility.

Who will I be? Who can I be? 

What will I do? What can I do? 

Comfort or prosperity? 

Does money bring happiness? 

What does success mean?

We are pulled, pushed, pinned and propelled. Every motion bruises our motivation. Every decision to be made strains our enthusiasm.

Study or work? 

Travel or save? 

Passion or wealth? 

Family or career?

We have a constant flow of visualisation of what our lives could be. Just as the waves hit the sand every second, we are confronted with yet another musing of a potential life.

What am I even good at? 

I could do that. 

I should do that.

I need to catch up.

Success means something very different to our peers than to our parents. A comfortable job with a lovely suburban home, a dog and a family no longer define a successful life – a life well-lived. This is not because it is no longer desired but because it is no longer achievable for most. The traditional life ideal is slowly dwindling.

Women are no longer held by the shackles of the descriptor of ‘housewife’ – the white picket fence surrounding the house she makes a home acting as her prison bars to a life of cooking, cleaning and caring. For this to no longer be the destiny of anyone born (in Western cultures) with two X chromosomes is an undeniable privilege. Even though there are barriers, we can almost be anything. So, should we be anything?

Is it a disservice to our ancestors – the trailblazers – to not take this privilege and everything we can from it, just as everything was taken from them?

Should I be a lawyer, doctor or CEO just because I can? 

Is it a waste of their efforts to do something traditionally feminine? 

Or, were their efforts to secure the opportunity of choice for us? 

But I am lucky enough to have the privilege of these options, so I should take the ‘best’ one. 

Guilty for our privilege: the privilege of living somewhere with equality, the privilege of having the skin colour that society has determined to be the ‘good’ one, the privilege of health and the privilege of access to education.

I need to do more. 

But how much can I do? 

I still need to do more. 

The Internet provides us with a perpetual commentary on the progression of our lives.

‘Ten Things to Do Before You Turn 20’                   

‘How to Start Investing’

‘How to Break into the Housing Market’

‘Here’s a List of the Best-Paying Jobs’

‘You Need to do this One Thing to be Successful’

‘How to Apply for Internships’

‘How I Became a Millionaire at 25’

‘What You Should Do to Stop Climate Change’

Scrolling on social media, we see people our age living the good life – travelling, buying million-dollar houses, dressing in the finest clothes and meeting powerful people. Understanding the mainly arbitrary nature of the algorithm, we know that this could just as easily have been us.

If only that TikTok I posted when I was 16 went viral. 

Achieving success is simultaneously harder and easier than it was for previous generations. You could be propelled into wealth and fame from one 15-second video transmitted from your phone to millions of others, eliciting a double thumb tap on a rectangular piece of glass. Otherwise, you could diligently work at university – holding onto the promise that the piece of paper you will receive after four years will grant you a life of success and comfort – only to be turned down from every job for lacking experience and be left with the weight of debt on your shoulders.

I know success means something different for everyone, but I do not know what it means to me. 

To focus my energy solely on being human, being connected to nature and being happy would be the greatest gift. 

Yet, to be comfortable and free are also deep desires: to be free from the crushing worry of money; to be able to afford to be safe, healthy, warm and to do the things I would like to; to be able to provide this to those around me. 

And how possible is it to attain this without working at something I do not genuinely like – contradicting my very aim? 

We know in the back of our minds that life is long.

I have time. I have my whole life ahead of me.   

But life nowadays is rapidly speeding up. Our world is fast-paced, and we never have time to escape this commotion. This haste surrounding us bleeds into our inner perception of where we sit within our timeline.

I need to do more now. 

I need to set up my future. 

I am running out of time.

Those older than us consistently offer their advice, solicited or not, with almost no consistency between them. The constant buzz of advisory voices contradicting one another is deafening.

Our exhaustion from agonising over what could happen, who we could be and what we need to do is shrinking our ambition. We are weighed down by worry. Not just lazy.

I do not know what my future will consist of. 

I do not know what the future of the world around me will consist of.

I guess we will see.