Bridging the Gap: The Rough Path to Adulthood
By: Lexi Brown
Tags: Growing Up, Change Your Life, Covid 19, Travel, Adulthood

Something I heard once that really resonated with me was that children are measured by their potential to do great things, whereas adults are judged by what they have already done. For a 19 year old who was ‘gifted’ as a child, this is a hard thing to come to terms with. The praise and reward you recieve for showing promise significantly lessens as you climb out of your teens, and you realise as you enter the working world that no one gives a damn if you have the talent to become a great writer or team manager or creative mind. If you haven’t proved those talents in a way that’s concise enough to fit in a tiny box on your CV or used as an example in an excruciating interview question then are they really talents at all?

Validation you took for granted as a kid now is replaced with expectation. Now is the time to be doing all those things people told you that you had the potential to be doing. If you’re not doing those things, you have failed in doing what was expected of you. A global pandemic has added another layer of turmoil to school leavers. The world was closed its doors to young people at exactly the time it should have been opening up. You wanted to study abroad? Nope, there’s a pandemic. Travel on a gap year? Not a chance. Meet new people at uni? Can barely even do that.

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The blame on young people for the spread of COVID-19 has been frankly digraceful. Sure, there are students at uni flaunting the rules but isn’t that something the government should have anticipated before making them pay £9000 a year for online learning and no social interaction? Many young people, like me, are at home, following guidlines, going to school or working as recommended by the government. The bigger problem with rule breaking comes from a more unexpected place; 40–60 year old, mostly white, very vocal Facebook and Twitter users. Mask denyers and anti-vaccers with a distrust of scientists and the government endanger other people’s lives by spreading false imformation and stirring up dissent against necessary measures. I’m not a supporter of the current government but I’m sure as hell going to follow what scientists determine can best prevent deaths. Young people’s futures are being seriously affected by the virus and all they face is blame for rising numbers and a shocking lack of support from the government.

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It’s easy enough for people to tell you that you can achieve anything you want to. Even without the pressures of COVID, what if you don’t know what you what to achieve? What if you have no idea what path in life you want to take? There’s a whole host of crippling doubts that plague the beginning of adulthood and the more choice you’re faced with, the harder it seems to forge a path through all the options. I think it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, especially when it feels as if your entire future rests on the decisions you’re making when you’ve barely grown up.

When I’m stressed out I like to think about successful people who switched up their life plan completely. Rowan Atkinson studied electrical engineering at Oxford, even completing his Masters before becoming a renowned actor. Mick Jagger was studying economics in London when he started playing with the Rolling Stones. Stephen King worked as a janitor at a highschool before becoming one of the most prolific writers of all time. The point is, there are a whole host of people who faced a similar uncertainty in the direction they wanted their life to go in, and a whole lot more that overcame larger adversities than social distancing and mask wearing to become successful.

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I think something I’ve gained from the pandemic and various lockdowns is a bit of perspective. When people tell you you can do anything with your life, I don’t think the concept properly registers. From childhood, we’re constantly weighed down by other people’s perceptions of us, other people’s expectations. Growing up there’s what seems like endless pressures from different sources pushing us in different directions. But whatever you believe you were put on this Earth to do, it really is your world. There’s nothing stopping you from saving up for a plane ticket, flying to America, buying a van and working freelance on the road for a few years. It may seem crazy but who’s stopping you? The loneliness of lockdown made me realise that there’s only a handful of people who’s opinions I genuinely care about, and out of those people the only person who’s going to be with me from birth to death is me. And hey, that’s not a sad thing. It just means that if I’m not defining my success in life as what will make ME happy, what will give ME the most personal fulfillment, then what the hell is the point?

With that thought, while bridging the gap between adolescence and adulthood may still be full of uncertainties, I can at least know that the choices I’m making aren’t for anyone else’s happiness but my own. 2020 has been the worst year of my life but I think without it, this isn’t something I would have ever realised, and for that at least, I’m so grateful.