The True Magic Of Our Twenties
Our twenties are a rebellion, a struggle against a world that’s trying to define us, contain us. They’re unruly and untamed—shots of tequila, shots of espresso, flights to anywhere and road trips to everywhere.
Our twenties are glazed in a raging insatiability. No matter how much we do, there is more to be done. More to see, more to experience, more to destruct. These years exude the rawness of life and the imperfection of youth. It’s walking around the kitchen naked with pizza at 3 a.m. It’s drunken life chats in bathroom stalls and falling in love. It’s days that feel like we have it all together and nights when it comes undone. These moments are half forgotten, lost in a blur of fury, of adventure and confusion, of black coffee and red wine. A restless restlessness like nothing we’ve known or will ever know again.
Suddenly thrust into the world, we’re adrift. Under the false presumption that everything would be figured out by now, we’re holding diplomas and lovers in temporary towns with temporary feelings, rambling and confused. It’s both beautiful and disastrous. Painful yet glorious. We’re unable to step back into the comforts of childhood, but so far from a future of stability. Out here, the winds of life blow unfairly and ceaselessly—and so do we, spinning together into splendid psychosis.
Balance is but a dismal delusion. We’re too much and too little, too soon and not enough. Our twenties are a battle. It’s the line we walk between our friends and family. Between who we are and who we’re told to be. A struggle to come to terms with ourselves, this world, and our place in it. Just when we step onto the brink of understanding, we fall away. Caught between the magnets of adulthood and youth, right and wrong, desire and control. Our words and actions often stand in stark opposition of each other.
In our twenties, there are no constants—not even within ourselves. Who we are, what we believe in, and everything in between impulsively shifts. It’s not knowing what lies beyond any decision, so we take every chance. Over and over, through and through. Though we instinctively crave structure, innately we fear it. For there is freedom to be found in the loose seams of these days. We’re dancing in a wildfire, tip-toeing along the edge of comfort. The blaze is unquenchable. The fervor refuses to sleep. There are no defined routes but rather amblings into a matted unknown. And nothing liberates us more than being lost.
The true magic of our twenties is that we don’t know what we’re doing, nor should we. Pointless are our attempts at sorting through the rubble, because our mistakes inevitably light the way. The more we resist the chaos, the further we push away its reckless beauty. Only once we come to terms with the madness of it all can we see the freedom in disaster. In accepting the confusion, we finally allow ourselves to revel in it.
So get it all out. The danger, the travel, the sex and the fire of youth. Perhaps the only way to escape life’s control is by succumbing to it—finding our wild, living our chaos, and surrendering to our truth. These days can only be taken lightly, letting the swell toss us around from country to country, lover to lover, adventure to adventure. Because one day, these days too will have passed, and we’ll look back on them with gleaming eyes for the mess of memories and scars left behind.