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It can get pretty hectic wanting to travel, party, hang out with friends, fall in love, work hard and relax at the same time. If you don’t stop to look around occasionally, you might lose track of where or who you are. There is a sense of urgency to being young – in the best and in the worst ways. 

Chasing memories

“Enjoy your twenties, they’re the best time of your life!” – Every student has heard this sentence at least once. They’re right, right? Being young is fun, you get to do what you want with minimal responsibilities. But sometimes, just sometimes, being young stresses me out. You only get to live this life once, so you need to make sure to get the best out of it. When you’re in your twenties, you’re finally old enough to do whatever you want while still being young enough to not have serious responsibilities yet. This is your only shot at being young and stupid, so you want to do everything and ideally do it all at once. 

FOMO

I don’t want to sit alone on a Saturday night when you know other people are out having the time of their life. FOMO, the fear of missing out, describes the feeling of panic at the thought of not being part of an event. Every experience could be the experience of a lifetime. Social media makes this so much worse, because it shows a highlight reel of everyone’s favorite moments. For every vacation picture, there’s an even better one around the corner. FOMO gets in the way of just doing what I want to do, because I just can’t bear the thought of missing out. There always seems to be something more exciting around the corner.

Finding beauty in being restless

I don’t want to make it seem as if I don’t enjoy being young. I love being able to go wherever I want, whenever I want. This is the time to be egotistic, everything you do revolves around you and your friends. You get to collect so many memories and experiences with your favorite people. Everything is a bit less serious and it’s probably not worth wasting this time on thinking about the future yet, but sometimes I just can’t help it.

Just enjoy the ride

If these are the best times of my life, as parents, teachers and popular culture try to convince me of, then what happens next? Probably real life accompanied by responsibilities and taxes. It also means more financial freedom, stability, and choosing your path outside of the education system.
Maybe there is beauty to be found in being young, careless, and irresponsible as well as in the first job, the first paycheck and actually growing up. It’s hard to find a balance between taking care of your future and living in the moment, but it’s definitely not worth it to waste any life stage on being worried about the next one. For now, shouldn’t we try to be less fearful of the future and just enjoy the ride?

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