Ready or Not: Leaning into Life in Our Twenties

Introduction

SO, WHAT ARE MY TWENTIES FOR, ANYWAY?

Not all those who wander are lost.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Think and wonder. Wonder and think.

Dr. Seuss

Sometimes we discover something we knew all along, but now we really know. Something that stops us dead in our tracks. This happened to Juan.

Juan, a twenty-six-year-old sales professional, looked at his phone to check the time: 6:30 p.m. It had been another long day at the office, and it was time to go home. A forty-five-minute commute awaited him. He shrugged his shoulders, sighed, and packed his messenger bag. Then he logged off his computer, exited his workstation, and walked through his office suite, saying good-bye to a few of his coworkers.

Juan’s career as an effective sales rep for a large food company looked bright. He was hitting his sales target, his bosses were taking notice, there was plenty of room for advancement, and his company was growing. But something that happened earlier in the afternoon had shaken him, and he was trying to make sense of it.

A few hours earlier, he had attended a company-wide sales meeting intended to rally the troops, cast vision, and inspire reps to meet new targets. Juan had no problems with any of this. He was a hard worker, an achiever who liked a challenge. What shook him was a specific phrase the corporate head of sales used—one of those simple, matter-of-fact statements that suddenly caused Juan to take a step back and see the world around him more clearly.

From the podium, the head of sales had exclaimed, The reasons for these new sales targets? More profit. Happier shareholders. Simple as that.

Juan gulped. He’d known all along that companies need to make money, and investors invest money to make more of it. But he was suddenly struck with the realization that all of his twelve-hour workdays, all of his achieving and striving, all the saying no to friends who wanted him to knock off early to have dinner out were simply to meet a corporate bottom line.

It was a good company, Juan explained to us recently, a good job. I’m not against a company making money, and I’m okay with shareholders making a good return. I don’t know. I guess I just began to question why I was doing what I was doing. I was so focused on work that I realized I wasn’t doing anything else meaningful. And I began to question whether it was worth it.

The very next day, Juan called a friend of a friend who was opening a restaurant. The owner had been looking for help. To make a long story short, Juan is now a manager at a restaurant you very well may frequent. He offered this reflection on his relatively dramatic job change: I’m working harder than in my old job, but I love it! And the crazy thing is, even though I’m working harder, I’m no longer all work all the time. I do other important things now too.

Anyone can tell that Juan traded one profit-hungry company for another. Both are focused on the bottom line, but Juan’s perspective is completely different. He still works hard. His boss still takes notice, but he is flourishing in a way he wasn’t before.

How do we make sense of this?

The twenties are marked with moments like the one Juan experienced at the company-wide sales meeting, moments where you may feel disoriented, discontent, and confused. These moments can cause you to feel caught in a land of in between, a place where you feel stuck somewhere you don’t want to be but unsure of how to get out.

At times your in-betweenness may find you facing two very good but completely different options. This was true of Jen, a twenty-two-year-old college senior. She came into my (Drew’s) office looking stressed on a cold, snowy day in the middle of an Indiana winter.

What’s wrong? I asked.

Well, Jen replied a bit sheepishly, "here’s the thing. My housemates sat me down last night and tried to talk me out of taking the internship I lined up so I can backpack with them in Europe after graduation. I don’t know what to do. I feel like the adult thing to do would be to take the internship. It’s an amazing opportunity. But I also feel like I’ve got the rest of my life to work, and one last hurrah with my friends in Europe would be amazing. I feel torn between what I probably should do and what I want to do . . . and what my friends are pressuring me to do."

It’s true, Jen did have an amazing opportunity before her—a postgraduate internship at a top public-relations firm in downtown Chicago. It wasn’t just a job. It was a launching pad for a great career. It’s probably helpful to note that Jen was no slacker. She was a leader on campus, a hard worker, and a thoughtful, smart, dedicated person.

Yet Jen was caught in the vortex of mixed messages swirling throughout her twenties. She felt the perceived expectations of her college, her church, and her family pulling her in one direction (toward a stable career). But she also felt a pull in the seemingly opposite direction to extend the good times just a little longer and delay adulting a bit more. One path offered stability, responsibility, and common sense. The other, exploration, adventure, and carefree fun.

Jen’s dilemma could be considered in a couple of ways: (1) as a First World problem, or (2) as a choice between what others felt she should do and what she really wanted to do.

Jen faced two enticing but vastly different options. Her choices felt like a coin flip. The advantages and disadvantages seemed opposite and neutralizing. As we talked, she dug a bit deeper. It became clear that behind Jen’s choice of an internship or the Europe trip was, in fact, a much deeper, vitally important question that deserved more consideration than the flip of a coin.

It was the very same quandary Juan experienced.

It’s a question of purpose, significance, and direction that haunts our twenties: What are my twenties for, anyway?

Instead of defining a single moment in your life, it defines the many moments that comprise a decade. It’s a question rife with tension and anxiety, full of your own expectations and those of parents, churches, employers, friends, and professors. It’s a question we’ll explore in this book.

You won’t find another book that will challenge you to lean into this question quite the way this one does. This book will uniquely equip you to thrive in your twenties, but without pat answers, simple formulas, or condescension. It’s a tall order, we know. Your twenties are filled with voices telling you what you should do with your life. Maybe you’ve had to deal with passive-aggressive questions or suggestions from relatives at family gatherings. Or the unending parental wisdom of completing a business degree to compensate for that art major. The voices may even come from the deluge of books and news articles shaming your generation for your lack of focus, your entitled sensibilities, and your quirkiness.

At the same time, much of your world conveys a very different message: You can (and should) have it all. Your twenties exist for you to be free! So wander, live a carefree life, and enjoy your twenties before you’re tied down with a mortgage, a marriage, and a career. Don’t date seriously. Don’t get chained to a desk. Don’t settle.

There’s even a label slapped on this phase of your life: emerging adulthood.[1] In other words, you aren’t a fully mature adult. You are emerging as an adult, and it’ll take you the entirety of your twenties to get there. And while you emerge, you can live with your parents.

According to a Pew Research study, half of millennials under the age of twenty-five live with Mom and Dad, as do a quarter of millennials between twenty-five and twenty-nine.[2] Surely, legitimate cultural and economic forces—such as economic instability, skyrocketing rent, and cultural family norms—are at play here, but regardless of the reasons, these statistics reinforce the message to a skeptical society that twentysomethings live with as few strings attached as possible for as long as possible.

Step back for a moment and consider this message. Then ask yourself, Is this carefree life really so amazing and carefree? There’s societal pressure to live it up in your twenties. Have the most amazing adventures. See as much as you can. Laugh the hardest. And Instagram and Snapchat it all so others can see what an amazing time you’re having.

If this is what society expects, then nothing is really, truly expected of you (other than proof you’re having a great time). The twenties become an in-between land, an already-but-not-yet phase of adulthood. A neutral zone between a fun, carefree childhood and boring adulthood. Nothing much is expected of you, other than posting an entertaining social-media feed. Not much is asked. The twenties are simply a ten-year transitional phase of life.

Or are they?

Jump-starting your way out of the land of in between into adulthood is often (but not always) expensive and saturated with expectation. What is this remedy for an aimless life? The definitive institution where you go to take life by the horns and wrestle it in the right direction. An institution glorified in movies and derided in the media. College.

College: The FOMO Place

Ben, one of the cleverer twentysomethings Jess and I have ever worked with, describes college this way: "It’s a place where you are supposed to have the time of your life and figure out your life at the same time. Don’t miss out on all the fun, all the experiences, and all the opportunities. FOMO (fear of missing out) and ROI (return on investment), both full throttle."

He’s onto something. College is this place where all your hopes and dreams (are supposed to) come true. It’s the place you leave home for to find yourself. Jess and I work at a college and love it. We believe in the transformative power of education in community. And yet we recognize that college can also have a hopelessly disorienting effect.

When you enter college, you’re afforded more choices for your future than ever before. Hundreds of majors, dozens of clubs and activities, trips over here and trips over there. You can do just about anything. Yet if you can do almost anything, how in the world can you possibly choose one thing to study or pursue?

There are two common reactions to all this freedom of choice. First, the dizzying array of options can lead to feeling overwhelmed (and even paralyzed) over how to proceed. This is when you shut down, turning off the decision-making parts of your brain to avoid the headaches. The second reaction is to ramp up the FOMO-fueled chaos and dive right into a voluminous number of college experiences. If you experience everything, you reason, something will work out.

If you left home to attend a faith-based college or were involved in a campus ministry at a secular university, chances are you were given (either directly or indirectly) a clear, though perhaps unspoken, expectation: By the time you graduate, you should (a) know exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life, (b) be completely clear on what your calling is, and (c) find your spouse. Reinforcing these subtle yet powerful expectations are adages such as Ring by spring (a popular expression for getting engaged before graduation) and Don’t be a super senior (in other words, make up your mind so you don’t have to spend an extra year at college). If you didn’t come from a church-based background but your peers did, you may find these expectations confusing.

But is everyone supposed to settle into a lifelong career by the age of twenty? Is there even such a thing as a lifelong career anymore? Is everyone supposed to marry by age twenty-two?

Upon graduation, despite good grades and great experiences, many twentysomethings face an uncertain future. The late southern novelist Walker Percy famously wrote, I made straight A’s and flunked ordinary living.[3] It’s a terrifying prospect to finish high school, college, or even graduate school and fall flat on your face in adulthood. It’s a tough world out there. The average twentysomething will have more than a handful of jobs during this in-between decade and will change residences multiple times. If you graduate from college but don’t have a serious relationship, a career path, and a clear sense of calling, it can feel demoralizing. Such so-called freedom eventually loses its luster.

As psychologist Meg Jay has observed, It seems everybody wants to be a twentysomething except for many twentysomethings themselves.[4] Our friend Ben agrees, putting it this way: The twenties are the best of life and the worst of life, and I can’t tell whether something is amazing or terrible half the time.

This is the dilemma Jen and Juan faced, as well as twentysomethings everywhere: the pressure to figure out life versus the pressure to enjoy life as much as possible. These polarizing pressures leave many twentysomethings with a sense of despair. How do you make sense of these conflicting messages? And what role does faith play in it all?

The Defining Decade: Hope, Purpose, Meaning

Your twenties are meant to take a decade. You shouldn’t be expected to figure out every aspect of your life during this season. To do so hurries you through incredibly important decisions that should not be rushed. Nor should your twenties be wasted. In this land of in between, a path can be carved. This book will equip you to live your twenties with hope, purpose, and meaning.

Hope. Your twenties should be a decade marked by hope, a time of exponential growth and potential when you can fully live your life and prepare for what’s next with great expectation. This should be an exciting time in your life, and you should be looking forward to all that’s ahead of you. It’s a season to be fully present yet hopefully prepared. English