The Roaring 20's

Another well written snippet that intrigued me.


"The twenties are known by some to be that relatively easy era beyond the strife of adolescence, a time of openness, discovery, and experimentation. You are no longer a wildly hormonal zit-driven hater of your parents. You’ve likely graduated from at least one institution, according to statistics, probably at least one institution of higher learning. But anyone that’s a hair beyond twenty-five knows that any light reading of the late twenties is as fake as a Louis Vuitton in Chinatown. Like most myths about aging, this one is a doozey. The twenties can be hard. Really, really hard.

But why, god, why is it so hard? The universal complaints of the Saturn Return show us that it is not a simply a falsely imposed cultural construction. Western culture (American in particular) is the only one that force feeds this value system on its people. Our culture allows us to vacillate wildly through our twenties, party like frat boys, and then by the eve of our thirtieth birthday expects us to have an engagement ring and a 401 K in hand. We learn early that if you haven’t gotten your act together by that fateful date, it’s probably all downhill. Thirty continues to be a threatening mile-marker on life’s highway. When we hit this age, inner and outer chaos descends. (In our navel-gazing culture, it is probably a slightly heavier burden to bear.)"