Even if you’ve never felt left behind in life, this pandemic made sure you got familiar with the feeling.
Since March 2020, when the world has been turned upside down, we’ve all been feeling a little left behind. Young or old, college-educated or not, great career and well-paying job or not, single or married, childless or full-time parents, men and overwhelmingly women — no one has been spared. And for anyone who, like me, is a millennial, the feeling is all too familiar.
Growing up post-2000 has been wildly different compared to previous generations and reams have been written about this. We haven’t hit the same life milestones — graduation, job, marriage, children, house — in the same order, or at all, as our parents or their parents before them. We’ve been sold this idea of chasing an elusive dream of happiness and doing what we love and finding meaning and passion in work which often means you don’t make much money. And without money, it’s easy to find yourself living with your parents as an adult (there’s a term for it: boomerang kids) or in some cases, gasping for breath under mountains of debt incurred either for expensive degrees you were told you needed or just living beyond your means. The flipside of this is living in relative poverty in expensive cities because that’s where all the opportunities are.
And social media filled with photos of people you once knew posing with full smiles in front of various accomplishments does nothing to your sense of self.
But it’s not all dark.
Millennials get so much flak for who they are. They’re called entitled, whiny, unprofessional. This generation is also the one that has come up with some of the best ideas the world has seen, forever changing the way we travel, live, love. Airbnb and Uber, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, Hinge and Tinder. And they’ve fought hard to be paid equally, to prioritise mental health, to get rid of the sheen that protects toxic bosses and workplaces from accountability, normalised speaking out against racism, misogyny, harassment, patriarchy. It’s a generation that has encouraged walking out of relationships because of incompatibility and unhappiness and for that to be reason enough. We have millennials to thank (partly) for many more women having the freedom to choose when or not to have children.
And yet, despite the good and the bad, we are still an entire generation lamenting, bemoaning that we feel left behind. That we don’t know how to “adult” (which, by the way, is a full-time job no matter what anyone tells you). That the last time they checked they were 23 and full of promise but they’ve blinked and ten years have gone by and suddenly they don’t know why their lives, their plans or their bodies have not gone in the direction they wanted them to.
Breathe.
I know it might seem silly to some people but I was terrified of turning 30. My life at the time didn’t look anything like what I thought it would, that I thought it should. I had just quit my job. I didn’t have a love life. I had no real plan. It seemed only yesterday that I was accepted into a fancy school and had an enviable work title and suddenly none of it mattered.
I didn’t know I would turn 30 (I’m not sure what else I expected to happen) but for a good few months when it became clear the birthday was coming around, I was panicking. And then I turned 30 and realised the world didn’t fall apart and I could just go on living my life instead of worrying about it so much. It’s some of what I mention in my first post too and part of the reason why I started writing this newsletter.
And I know from other people, the panic is similar to coming up to most major milestone birthdays — 40, 50, 60. They’ve had all the same feelings around turning 30 too. It seems like only the 70, 80 and 90-year olds don’t worry about this stuff.
Even after turning 30, I have agonised again and again and again about decisions I made in my teens and early 20s. As if it weren’t enough that you basically have eggshells for brains at this time in your life and without any experience or perspective, you have no clue of how to do anything but you’re so full of conviction about nothing, I have lost chunks of time wondering if I should have studied different subjects, if I should have gotten a different job, if I should have chosen different romantic partners, even though I know that the majority of people question this time in their life no matter how seemingly perfect it is. Because there’s no “manual”, no way of gaming the system.
I spoke with someone the other day who said even though they feel like they’ve crossed off all the traditional markers of adulthood, they still feel left behind. Job hunting in a pandemic is a special kind of pain and I always thought that someone who has just come out of college was at a greater advantage but going by this piece (please read, it’s very good), that’s not always the case.
So who has this thing called life all sorted out?
If there’s anything coming up to my mid-30s has taught me, it is this:
There is no such thing as lost time or lost opportunities.
You never “miss the memo” of how to live your best life. The learning and loving is in the living.
At every moment, you are EXACTLY where you are meant to be and this is no accident.
There is no “right” path or “right answers”.
Life is messy and unpredictable and parts of it sometimes downright suck (there’s no other word to describe it better) but it’s also wonderful and the biggest favour we can do to ourselves is chill the hell out and enjoy it.
I know I speak from a place of privilege and not everyone has the luxury of seeing things this way. All I’m trying to say is, there are no rules to follow, sometimes not even your own. Especially not your own because we can all get so in our heads about this stuff. Most of what we’re made to believe about growing older or age-related achievements is a lie. There’s no 30 under 30 or 40 things to do before your 40 list to make.
The only path you need to follow is your own, it’s never too late to change your mind or course or anything else really and the only thing that matters is how you love and how you’re loved along the way. And this:
Read that last line again and memorise it.
Katie Hawkins-Gaar has thoughts about this in My Sweet Dumb Brain.
And I really like following this account on Instagram who largely promotes a minimalist lifestyle but so much of what Annie says about not following fake rules is so true and can be applied to many other parts of life.
In Women Wins this Week
Last week, I wrote about women in history who aren’t known widely enough. Chonira Belliappa Muthamma is another example whose life is captured in this brilliant story by Narayani Basu and the fine folks at Fifty Two. It is so good, packed with details about rules and a system that existed until not so long ago and why we’re still only just getting started at dismantling them. Special love for Muthamma with whom I share a home state.
Also belonging to home territory is Kamala Sohonie, who I learned this week was the first Indian woman to receive a PhD in science. But not without struggle. Turns out, even though she aced the exam in physics and chemistry towards a BSc from Bombay University, she had trouble convincing the director, CV Raman, to admit her to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore in the 1930s. There’s an entire neighbourhood named after the man in Bangalore and we grow up hearing stories of contributions of people like him to science, to the landscape of the city. And not to dismiss all the good he did. But these narratives aren’t the whole picture if details of how he once discriminated against a female scholar simply because he didn’t think women were “competent” and would “spoil the environment” for researchers by being a “distraction” aren’t part of it. Kamala didn’t back down. She protested until she was granted admission, eventually becoming the first Indian woman to qualify as a biochemist with a doctorate in 1939. Fun fact: Today, IISc has five residential buildings for women. (Credit: Gender+ newsletter by The Times of India)
This story makes my point of why women’s involvement and engagement in multiple sectors, especially ones that are harder for them to break into, is so so important and worth pushing for. Pay attention to those numbers. They are unreal.
On a related note, I’m late to see this but delighted that a woman of colour is in such a senior position at a place that produces some of the best journalism.
Not a win but worth knowing about, this post made me think of how legal systems have historically discriminated against women, which I’ve written about here.
And I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of Kavitha Rao’s book, Lady Doctors: The Untold Stories of India’s First Women in Medicine. Always tough territory for a woman to navigate, whether as a doctor or patient, we need more women in healthcare and more stories to capture their experience. Case in point, read this thread:
More details about Kavitha’s book here:
To close this week, please read what I wrote for Media Diversity Institute about the importance of more mainstream cinema showing South Asian women, and really more women of colour, playing sports. Watch this brilliant NYT story about Lusia Harris, a first woman in basketball, and read this one by Motoko Rich and Hikari Hida about how girls in Japan are expected to be demure and ladylike instead of encouraged to play sport.
Think about how many sportspeople you’ve known before your time. The “greats”, as they’re called. How many of them are women? Did you know of Lusia until today?
It is such an exhausting way to go through life constantly thinking you have to catch up to some impossible set of standards. And the hoops women are expected to jump through always outnumber the ones for men.
As I approach my mid-30s, I am embracing exactly where I am and who I am, unapologetically. I don't care for made up timelines. I don’t care for opinions of what I “should” be doing. I am done feeling left behind. I want to be happy and make sure the people I love are happy.
That is all.
I’ve been counting down the days to when I can be by a pool again — sunglasses, room service and my favourite people for company. What are you dreaming of?
xx
AA