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It’s become apparent to me that many of my peers in their mid-twenties have confused the notion of being comfortable with being happy. I worry because I believe that some of these people do not realize the extent to which their own human nature can make them unhappy, given enough time.
The class of people that I refer to goes by several names: “twixters”, the “boomerang generation”, or the “echo baby boom”— those 20-somethings who could live on their own, or at least could learn to live on their own, but instead choose to live with their parents indefinitely.
(I’ll write the rest of this entry addressing the 2nd-person instead of the 3rd-person because some of you reading this blog belong to this group.)
I’m not talking about those of you who need to stay at home in order to care for a family member who cannot take care of him/herself. You do not deserve to bear that type of burden at this point in your life, and so I sympathize. And I’m not talking about those of you who may be a little bit older, who have lived on your own for a few years (excluding college) and have fallen on bad times, financial or otherwise. Again, I sympathize.
This is about the rest of you– the ones who should be taking care of yourselves but aren’t– especially those of you whose best justification for living at home is that it “makes good financial sense”. You are sitting on a timebomb and you may not even know it.
Now, I realize that, for those college graduates who leave school with debts in the thousands of dollars, living at home is an attractive financial option. But I’m warning ALL of you guys: If you’re not progressively ratcheting-up your own financial independence — if you’re not pushing yourself to earn a steady paycheck, prepare your own meals, maintain your own car, pay ALL your own bills — then it may take an enormous amount of time for you to learn to get by without mom and dad’s help. That can seriously undercut your ability to live your own life.
To those of you who are in debt–
How long will it take you to pay off those student loans? Many loan repayment programs start at ten years. Are you telling me that you’re going to spend the better part of a decade (in your mid/late 20s, no less) under your parents’ roof because of that? I have two words: loan consolidation.
To those of you who aren’t in debt–
How much money do you intend to save before you DO move out? Just give me a ballpark amount. Or, at what other point do you intend to leave home? Just a rough estimate. 6 months? Next year? Time passes quicker than you might think.
Look– If you don’t yet have a job that will cover the rent of a cheap apartment (plus student loans, etc.), then GET A JOB THAT WILL PAY THE BILLS, AND GET OUT. If it means working somewhere that you really don’t want to work in order to make ends meet while you hunt for something better, then DO IT; you won’t be at the crummy job forever. If it means refinancing your student loans so that you have an easier time paying your monthly bills, then DO IT; reducing interest rates may be a smart choice. If it means moving to a different area of the state or country in order to find a more affordable spot to live, then DO IT.
Find a way. Talk to people you know who are out there making it happen for them. Ask for help if you need it. Make it happen for you. If you think I’m being a huge condescending jerk, think again. I want to help. I’m honestly afraid for my friends’ well-being. I don’t think that some of you guys understand just how incredibly EASY it is to become stagnant– to become complacent with a life that you don’t really want — only to discover at some later date that you would’ve been far better off challenging yourself to take control of your situation years earlier.
My concern stems from a couple of rather plain truths, the first being
(1) If you don’t set clear goals, you’re not going to accomplish much of anything.
If you don’t decide just how much time you’re going to spend at home, then you’ll passively keep setting your move-out date further away. It may be years before you actually leave.
If you can’t learn to master your student loan payments, you will have no chance managing a mortgage or a car loan or insurance. Do you want to own a few big-ticket items? Then practice paying the bills and stretching the value of your dollar. (And don’t buy that plasma screen before you have a living room to put it in.)
Set goals. Come up with a plan. Take control. Make it work. Procrastination is easy. Relying on someone else to take care of you is easy. Living a life under the comfortable umbrella of mom and dad’s house without challenging yourself to find something better is incredibly easy. But it’s also dangerous, because
(2) Human beings, by nature, always want MORE.
Maybe you have your sights set on a particular career. Maybe you want to travel the world. Maybe you want a more advanced degree. Maybe you want a spouse and 2.5 kids. Maybe you’re loony enough to go BASE jumping. Maybe — just maybe — you really DO want to live your life without being tied down to a place that you already know like the back of your hand.
Then again, maybe you have very little ambition and you’ve convinced yourself that you’re just fine where you are. So why should you rock the boat? Why should you leave such a comfortable existence? Because
(a) The more you stay in one place — doing the same thing — the less you’ll care about switching things up, trying something new. That’s NOT GOOD for someone in his/her 20s who doesn’t even know what the world has to offer.
(b) If you spend too much time with the same people, you will become emotionally chained to them. Their problems will become your problems. (Yes, that includes mom & dad, even though they may have your best interests at heart.) Young people give themselves enough grief; you don’t need to deal with anyone else’s stress but your own.
(c) If you do just stay at home, you will eventually get bored. And, come that fine day when my words actually DO sink in and indeed you DO want to leave the nest, you won’t have a CLUE how to do it. Your life will have become your crutch. And, mark my words, you will become a miserable person once you realize that you have no stories to tell your friends that they haven’t already heard, no wisdom to pass along from all those places you didn’t go and people you didn’t meet, and no family of your own because your girlfriends couldn’t get over the fact that you still live with your parents.
Although you may be stuck in a rut, the fact remains that at no other time in your life will you have as few responsibilities as you have right now. Use that to your advantage. Pick yourself up out of the rut, and live life the way that you want to live it.
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I’ve done some thinking lately about what truly makes a person an adult. I had come up with a small list of “rites of passage”, such as obtaining a steady job, maintaining a serious relationship, buying a house… things like that. But I realized that every item on my list fits under one heading: Knowing How to Adapt.
Deciding where you want to go in life. Struggling to get there. Eventually achieving what you want to achieve because you’ve learned how to channel your time and effort in a successful way after a ton of disappointments. Using those same disappointments to develop such a thick skin so that eventually nothing can overwhelm you. That’s what makes you an adult.
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You don’t become an adult by sitting on your ass. If you’re in your 20s and you’re comfortable, something’s wrong. And you’re wasting what could amount to a very interesting life.
You’re supposed to struggle. Life is supposed to intimidate you. If you find that you tell yourself things like “I could afford to move out, but it wouldn’t be easy making ends meet” or “I could take that job offer, but I wouldn’t know anybody there” or “I could visit that place, but I’m not familiar with the area” — you’re really telling yourself “I could do what I really want to do, but I’m afraid because I don’t know if I can handle it”.
Well you’re definitely not going to be able to overcome bigger obstacles later on if you can’t challenge yourself to stand on your own two feet right now.
Take the risk. Leave your comfort zone for a little while. The payoff can be enormous. And what’s the worst that can happen? Whatever that is, I’m sure you can handle it. You’d be a better person for handling it.
Life doesn’t give you happiness; you must go and get it. So what are you waiting around here for?
