Adulthood in Modern America

Written in 2014

Trying to choose a career in modern America is like trying to find a life-long partner on Tinder. Many options exist, and a different fantasy future could be played out with each one, but why settle for something that isn’t perfect when users can just swipe left and potentially find the one? Of course, most people don’t find their soul mates on Tinder. In fact, Tinder is usually used for something like practice: a way to develop a repertoire of skills while getting a little something extra on the side. Tinder dates have a less than admirable reputation; and sure, this time it could be love, or it could be really boring and not live up to online expectations. In any case, there’s a pool of 10 million users to keep searching through if something doesn’t work out.

My generation, the Millennial/Y/We/Me/Next/Net/Tech/Dumbest/Greatest/Twixter generation is considered to be lazy but entrepreneurial, selfish but understanding, technologically intelligent but otherwise inept. We are known for our narcissism, manifest by the number of selfies we snap per day, and infamous for the protean yet hopeful lives we lead. One of the most commented on and criticized characteristics of my generation is its tendency to voluntarily job-hop. Millennials are expected to hold a minimum of fifteen jobs in our working lifetimes; however, this number is not attributed to our inability to maintain employment, but rather, our prerogative to quit if we are unhappy, offered better opportunities, or want new experiences. I can understand Gen Xers’ frustration with Millennials’ lack of job security, and obviously parents don’t want to support their flâunerial children forever, but we are a product of and responsive to our unique environment—as every other generation has been.

Millennials draw much of our confidence from unwarranted entitlement, which is probably why older generations begrudge following the whole Jeffersonian paradigm of soldier to farmer to artist. The foundation and encouragement lent to us are accepted as inalienable, so when we cast off our parents’ mediocrity, we do so without a modicum of appreciation that we may do so at all. This mentality is perfectly captured by an Elite Daily article I came across on Facebook, 50 Reasons This Generation Can’t Get It’s Sh*t Together And Actually Shouldn’t. The list, which includes reasons such as, “We’re cultivating our creativity rather than mowing our lawns,” and “We’re going out with a bang rather than banging our secretary,” is proceeded by a fuck the man diatribe straight from the 70s. The introduction attempts to explain that my generation’s childishness and instability is a self-selected reaction to the previous generation’s enslavement to conformity. The author emphasizes that if Millennials wanted a normal life and to wear pantsuits, we could get our shit together. We simply choose not to.

The thing is, I do want my shit together. Most of the Millennials I know are trying to get their shit together. In fact, it is quite common to be extremely jealous of peers who have conceptualized their passions and made careers out of them. “Find what you love and let it kill you:” a sentiment I know is lauded by my generation because I see it reposted on various stock photos all over Tumblr. If Millennials are so inspired to do one thing for the rest of our lives, then why is that not the reality?

Our lack of follow through just might stem from the fact that when I type “job” into Google, close to two billion links appear in 0.34 seconds. The Internet allows Millennials to come into contact with thousands of potential career paths via job databases, LinkedIn updates, and Tweets soliciting applicants; however, the immense number of job openings isn’t the only thing dispersing our occupational attention. Media outlets show us what it’s like to be designers, chefs, doctors, crab fishers, detectives, Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders, moonshiners, etc. Of course, none of the careers seen on television or in movies are portrayed with exact realism, which might be why people find them appealing, but the salience lies in exposure. Millennials are no longer bound by nuclear or regional prospects. We are surrounded by inescapable and infinite-algorithmic opportunity.

Not only do we have access to every possible job opening, Millennials also have the means to make these futures come to fruition. Do it yourself is no longer an imperative, but a proposition for creation. How To tutorials and Instructables teach people everything from beer brewing and data analyzing to tree trimming and investment banking. Basic tutorials have grown into websites dedicated to helping people learn entire skill sets for free. Accredited online schooling is quickly overtaking traditional schooling, and allowing all who want an education to get one. A degree is no longer required for success though. College dropouts are Silicon Valley royalty, and make-up gurus are building massive empires from their Youtube channels. Technology has placed the means of acquisition and development directly into the masses hands, and made it such that anyone with interest and work ethic now has potential.

I sometimes wonder if parents’ and grandparents’ frustration with our indecisiveness is, in actuality, jealousy. They’re jealous that, for us, any future is plausible, and they simply wish to have been born with the same fate. However, to view my generation’s facile access to opportunity as only a privilege is reductive. In his TED Talk, The Surprising Science of Happiness, Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard psychology professor, speaks instructively about the danger freedom poses to a person’s ability to synthesize happiness. In brief, Gilbert argues that due to impact bias, a human tendency to overestimate the differences among various outcomes, it is difficult for someone to be happy with a choice they have made when they have freedom in choosing and changing that decision. If Millennials have the ability to be anything we want at any point in time, and if synthetic happiness is inversely related to freedom of choice, then we’re screwed. We’re environmentally primed to swipe left, always believing there’s a more rewarding choice. Technology will have us on the continual pursuit for an unobtainable happiness.

As much as I would like to think this is a special generational affliction induced by computers, it isn’t. In 1976, New York Magazine published Tom Wolfe’s piece, The “Me” Decade and the Third Great Awakening. In his article, Wolfe describes how the latter half of the 20th century produced the homo novus, the socialist ideal of a man with time, money, and freedom; however, rather than expending these resources upon the betterment of society, the people of the 70s found more fulfillment in focusing their energies towards self-realization. The generation that so devotedly dissects Millennials is the original “Me” generation, comprised of people plagued by narcissism and dedicated to filling in blank futures with their own unbounded wants. These pathologies aren’t even modern phenomena though.

The original critic of all things American, Alexis de Tocqueville, composed a frighteningly resonant chapter, “Causes of the Restless Spirit of Americans in the Midst of their Prosperity,” in his second volume of Democracy in America. In this chapter, Tocqueville questions why Americans, despite their propitious circumstances, are always anxious and depressed. He notes that two factors contribute to this attitude: obsession with personal welfare and access to every profession. Tocqueville observed that the combination of these components led Americans to, “continually change their track for fear of missing the shortest cut to happiness.” As it turns out, job-hopping is more of an American thing than a Millennial thing, and arises from fear, not dissent.

Throughout my formal education, everyone told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. That’s a false promise wrapped in a nebulous timeframe, yet parents reinforce this idea because every child deserves to explore their hypotheticals. However, this adage intended for youth has become a habitual mindset. I don’t know if we should blame technology, American culture, or supportive parenting, but I do know Millennials are having a difficult time relinquishing our seemingly inexhaustible potential. We are having a difficult time growing up. Even Beyoncé and Jay-Z, the two people with literally everything anyone could ever want, concluded each show of their On The Run Tour by performing “Young Forever.” Adulthood isn’t dying; it’s just not trending right now, and how could it in an age that exalts youth and therefore, potential, above all else? This degree of FOMO should not be associated with becoming an adult.

I wish adulthood was all about having a mortgage, family, steady career, and sea salt, but these are only the visages of growing up. It’s terrifying to think that if I decide on one path in life I will be denied a whole host of experiences and chances for happiness and success. I don’t want to believe that most of my dreams won’t come true when I am imbued with so much promise. I’m not ready to accept that I am limited, and by doing so, transition into adulthood. Acquiescing to one’s loss of potential is probably the most depressingly difficult thing anybody can do, and though most people throughout history have done it, the difficulty is now computationally exacerbated.

It’s highly un-American of me to conclude by telling my contemporaries to give up their dreams, but to be honest, it is a universal principle that over time all systems move to a lower state of potential. Though our opportunities seem unbounded, we can’t possibly seize every fantasy that materializes in our musings, so we cannot think of commitment as forfeiture. Millennials are lucky in that we don’t have social prohibitions against what each of us can become, but that still doesn’t mean we can have it all.

Growing older is inevitable, but adulthood is a choice; and we can choose to think of limitations as the loss of options, or as a motivating factor to discover what we truly want to make of our lives. Limitations force us to elect and fulfill the potential we believe is in alignment with what we love and who we are. This requires intensive introspection and sacrifice, but in the end, if one’s priorities are self-evident, adulthood shouldn’t be all that bad.