Figuring out that you’re probably never going to figure it out, is the first step to figuring it out. Old people need to chill out. Except Jeffy – he’s cool. I don’t usually like to point fingers, but I’m blaming the brain for this one.
My thoughts, though few, are currently all over the place. I
think I’ve said too much that I’ve confused myself – happens very often. But
basically we’ve come under fire for taking too long to grow up, right?
What does that even mean? Too long?? Sounds pretty
subjective to me. Did you learn ANYTHING from watching Interstellar, mate? That perhaps time is relative? Or that love is a force in Science, which transcends
dimensions and can’t be quantified? Or that we can use the force of love to
guide us through a baffling array of time-rooms, find our 10-year-old daughter,
and communicate with her using Morse code (because our daughter is that smart.
And the force of our love will help her understand)? Or at the very least, that
setting fire to a cornfield is a good way to distract your brother?
Picking up where we left off in this grand Gen Y discussion, it’s
an honour to introduce you to my main man, Jeffery Jensen Arnett. Even though Jeffy
(yea, we’re on nickname basis now) is not actually one of us, meaning he’s old
– judging from his hair, I’d say a baby boomer – he’s actually a pretty sweet
guy. He hasn’t participated in much of the psychobabbling and name-calling
nonsense that’s been hurled at us. Quite the opposite, he’s dedicated only
like, his entire life to research in the new phase of human development he
discovered and coined “emerging adulthood.”
That is, when he’s not vegging out with his wife (Lene) and
twin daughters (Miles and Paris) in Denmark, which he does every summer, by the
way. Imagine if the guy actually worked through his summers – like the rest of
us. He’d probably have discovered by now, some scientific theory explaining how
and why we Millenials seem to believe the sun shines out of our arses, which is
really what we need to clear our names once and for all.
And I have a feeling the truth is going to make everyone
else feel so guilty for ever kicking up such a huge fuss and calling us
“aimless” and “selfish” and “entitled”, that they’re just going to let us have
our inheritance already. I mean, I dunno about you, but I feel emotionally
ready to be the heir of a very large sum of money right now. This may have
something to do with the Christmas sale going on, I can’t say for sure.
Ok, so: neuroscience data suggests that our brains are still
changing and developing well into their third decade. It’s kind of like how we’re
empathic towards the teenagers with weird facial piercings, long and greasy fringes
obscuring their faces, and black varnish on their nails. Oh, poor lambs. The
pixies are already working overtime to put the other half of their brain together.
They simply can’t see what we see.
Until very recently, we (not you and me per say, but our
parents and older) had to make some pretty life-determining decisions about
education, career paths, who to tie the knot with and whether to go into the
military, at a time when parts of our brains weren’t optimal yet. The
prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for planning, prioritizing and
controlling impulses, is one of the last brain regions to mature. Having
earlier established that we’re going to live till 200 – I know the number seems
high, but it’s in the ballpark – it makes biological sense that the 20s have
shifted from being a time for setting your life in stone to a time for
self-discovery.
Just between you, me, myself, and I, what does it mean to be
an adult, anyway? When I was 15, I scribbled ‘Criteria for Adulthood’ on the
top of a napkin. The list went: one, visit Paris; two, learn to wear lipstick
like a real woman; three, get a tattoo; four, stop using swearwords as
counterarguments; five, eat chicken liver.
I’ve managed to do two and a quarter of those things, so I’m
clearly almost half an adult now. That’s how you become an adult, right? By
ticking off boxes on a checklist, even though there may be some grey area of fuzzy
maturity and wisdom measure that’s not so easy to ascribe.
In my oh-so-limited existence, I’ve come across a number of
40-, 50-, even 60-somethings, who don’t have all of their boxes checked. (Have
you been to Europe?) They’ve either started their careers over or never quite
settled into one (in big people language: career reinvention,
entrepreneurship). They are either single or divorced (in big people language:
fear of commitment, irreconcilable differences). They either don’t want kids,
or just behave like kids (in big people language: personal choice).
Are they adults? One thing’s for sure, we aren’t the ones
pointing fingers and throwing pejoratives at people with half-formed brains.
So, we have half-formed brains. Fuckkkkk………………. We can
either use this as an excuse and prove the baby boomers right, or cash in on
this handicap and prove them wrong.
As it happens, an unfinished brain allows us to competently acclimatize
ourselves to changing environments and pick up new skills quickly. Adaptability
is key in a world where Orange Is the New Black, Cronuts are the new donuts, Uber
drivers are the new cab drivers – and they are freaking out big time, in case
you didn’t know (who wants to be the first one to break the news to the cabbies
about driverless Google cars that require human intervention only once every
one million miles?).
It’s vital that we make sense of what kind of
world it is that we’re living in and then decide what we need to be really good
at. And neuroscience proves having half a brain is just ideal for this. So tell
your folks to chill out as you expose yourself to new things, change your mind
often and seem very unstable in your life. Just remember to practice
independence and maturity in other ways.
