Dear Young People: These Are Not Your Best Years.
Hey kids; it’s your cool early 30s Uncle Conor here. Let me rap at you for a second.
[I’m going to be talking about people under 25. That doesn’t mean you aren’t young if you’re 26, it just means you should be in a home for old folks.]
As Ireland continues its lockdown, with restrictions for Level 5 (total lockdown) only being lifted in May, effectively keeping the country in some form of restrictions for a year now, we’re seeing people’s patience wane. One of the many rallying cries that has emerged has been the classic “Think of the children”, paraphrased as an obsession with young people and their wasted youth, or their childhood robbed from them because of lockdown.
This is, as us cool kids who listen to William Eilish and Little Nazex say, bullshit.
Yes, if you’re a teen or a young adult, it’s exciting to be at this moment in your life. Everything is new and cool, and you’re discovering yourself. But you can have that feeling your whole like. Isn’t that awesome! You get to be 80 and still try new things! You get to be 40 and hear this new band that just sounds amazing! But you’re never told that. You’re never told your life doesn’t end at 28.
Why?
Though the concept of childhood as being a special and sacred time dates back to the Victorian era, influenced by Christian art and motifs that glorified Jesus as a holy child, “Youth” culture and adolescents only became really part of the lexicon around the 1950s as teenagers emerged as a demographic with disposable income, whether by having no real parental or societal obligation or by having a golden path ahead of you (those who served in World War II were nearly always guaranteed a job and affordable college).
What was great about this new demographic was they were coming into their first years of fully formed mental capacity (personalities, opinions, beliefs, relationships) so they had no previous experience to gauge current experiences by. Even if something was bad, there was nothing to go off of. So there’s this 10 year gap where you’re not only constantly being marketed to, but you aren’t even being sold quality stuff.
Don’t worry, cool Uncle Conor with his backwards cap isn’t complaining about the hippity-hoppities or the Cardi B Jordans. I just want you to know there are people who benefit from you buying into a culture not for its experiential value or your enjoyment of it, but for your economic participation of it. Ask yourself, if this labels, producers, studios, platforms, distributors, and influencers really care about me and my thoughts, why are they obsessed with me being young? Why are they obsessed with marketing themselves to me? Why can’t they be unsensational and speak to me not as a child but an adult? There’s an irony to this. The same media overlords who market your favourite show or music act to you are the same people who complain about you and your generation to your parents and grandparents.
Another reason you’re told these are the best years of your life is because for many people they were. Not because somehow being 17 was a magical time of sex, drugs, and partying, but because everything went downhill so fast. I know lads who were the cute guy everyone hit on in school and are now fat, balding, divorcees (. I know people who thought they were hot shit and are now in a job they hate, with kids they dislike, watching shows they’re numb to. I’m sorry, but if your teen years are the best years of your life, but… I’m not saying kill yourself, but you’re the one who’s saying there’s nothing after that.
Adults telling you to be grateful, or to enjoy your younger years, or even scolding you for not being more social or spontaneous is basically the para-social equivalent of living vicariously through you. Now yes, live, do the things, don’t have regrets, but two things;
- Why are you allowing people older than you to dictate not only how you see your life going but also to dictate how you feel about your current situation?
- If adults assume that your life will follow the same trajectory as theirs (despite changes in culture, technology, and the world), why would you listen to them if they can’t separate their regrets from their perception of you? Why would you listen to them?
There is such a thing as a glow-up. It sounds cliché but, yes, for every hot-shot who gets beaten down by life, there’s also a nerdy, awkward teen who grows up into a confident, attractive, charismatic adults (just like you’re cool Uncle Conor who hangs out with the cool kids smoking the Devil’s Cabbage behind the school bike shed). Where you are now is no sign of where you’ll be in the next 10, 20, 50, 70 years. There’s such a thing as self-help or reinvention. And you can do that whenever. You can have 60 terrible years and then turn it completely around, you just have to be willing to try. Saying you’re in your prime between 13 and 25 is not only extremely defeatist and depressing, it’s kind of creepy to conflate sexual maturity and fertility with happiness and life satisfaction, especially when it’s older people telling you all this.
The important thing isn’t the moment you’re young. When you’re young you’re idealistic, willing to try, and aspiring to dreams. The important thing is to keep those attributes throughout your life. If you do, you’ll never feel old a day in your life.
Also, be childish every now and then. You’re alive.
