may I be I is the only prayer-- not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong-- ee cummings

"20-somethings."

It's a hot topic right now. Blogs, the New York Times, various relatives-- they all want to know what we're doing and why we're doing it differently than our parents. Raised on computers, we're the "Internet generation," the "Facebook generation," the "Don't Know How to Communicate" generation (To qualify- we communicate constantly, but, as the theory goes, we don't know how to do it in person. Apparently, texting and Facebook have melted our brains and stolen our socialization. Go figure). Much talk circulates of our poor job prospects, and the resulting dissatisfaction from overqualification and our slower pace in finding a career, a spouse, and a house.

Perhaps these conversations are nothing new (surely the older generation perennially speculates on the strengths and flaws of their successors?), and I've only just tuned into them as my own college graduation looms in the not-so-far-off distance (4 months?! gulp). Regardless, the pressure to "figure out what to do with my life" has become suddenly ever-present.

I don't know who said this, but I think we're on the same page:

I may still not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that someday I want to live in a house filled with my books and travel souvenirs. And the walls that aren’t covered in bookshelves will be covered with photos of my family and friends. When I leave the house I will be going to a job I love, and I’ll return to a person I love. So, that’s my dream I’m working on.

That kinda sums it up, no?  And this is certainly appealing...

Switch the paint set with a good book, please.

And the appeal of these two delightful plans stems at least partially from their simplicity.  They sound so easy. So clean.  I've learned in the last year that I crave simplicity.  Too many choices are overwhelming.  Clutter becomes distracting.  Spreading myself too thin (although I keep making that mistake over and over) leaves me exhausted and feeling that I haven't given anything or anyone the time and attention deserved. 

But life is messy and anything but easy.  And, inevitably, something will come up and my busy-ness factor shoots up ten-fold. I keep trying to make space-- to think, to be still-- but space seems hard to come by.  Presumably this task only becomes more difficult as responsibility and the requirements of everyday routines take hold. 

So, I don't have any answers.  To all those who ask about my future, to whom I try to respond politely, please know that I'd like to yell back a thousand questions.  I don't know what it means to be "20-something."  Can what I want now (really truly want. from the bottom of my stomach and out through my toes and the hairs on my head) be so different than what I'll seek ten, twenty, thirty years from now?  For now, this resonates:

Make for yourself a world you can believe in.
It sounds simple, I know. But it’s not. Listen, there are a million worlds you could make for yourself. Everyone you know has a completely different one - the woman in 5G, that cab driver over there, you. Sure, there are overlaps, but only in the details. Some people make their worlds around what they think reality is like. They convince themselves that they had nothing to do with their worlds’ creations and continuations. Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed soufflés and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. But you want to make for yourself a world that is deliberately and meticulously personalized. A theater for your life, if I could put it like that. Don’t live an accident. Don’t call a knife a knife. Live a life that has never been lived before, in which everything you experience is yours and only yours. Make accidents on purpose. Call a knife a name by which only you will recognize it. Now I’m not a very smart man, but I’m not a dumb one, either. So listen: If you can manage what I’ve told you, as I was never able to, you will give your life meaning.

— Jonathan Safran Foer, A Convergence Of Birds

And, for now, I'll just keep trying.