What is the difference between being 20 and 40?

I’m at the delicate age of 22 where, pretty much everything, lies in the balance. Fresh out of university, I have to start a career, acquire a place to live and find a wife. At least that’s what I’m meant to do. Such expectations however, can only lead to disappointment and frustration when we are greeted by an inevitable halt, followed by blind panic. What if I don’t do this? What if I don’t do that? Because to many, age is a timeline filled with milestones that simply have to be met – making life less of a ride and more of a race. And my parents had the nerve to spout clichés like: “these are the best years of your life”. I think I’d rather be 40.

“He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.” These wise words from Plato couldn’t be more relevant to me at this point in time. I’ve swapped my graduation gown for the invisibility cloak of job hunting and the subsequent result is what feels like a midlife crisis, twenty years too early.

But signing up to every graduate job website in the realm isn’t the only monotonous part of being twenty-something. I’ve also subscribed to the idea that it’s the purgatory part of life. It’s the point where things start to go either really well, or really bad, and until then you’re going to realise that daytime television really is godawful.

Thomas Hardy captured a similar feeling in Far from the Madding Crowd, when he stated a coral reef that just comes short of the ocean surface is as if it never existed, and it is only when there is a visible finishing stroke that something can be considered accomplished. Maybe that’s why we feel the need to augment ourselves with achievements and possessions. Without them, how can we mark our progress?

Most people I know above 40 tell me that feeling never goes away. They insist they had the same mind when they were 20, only now they have a steady income, a mortgage, a family and what can only be described as… stuff. So does owning the entire contents of an IKEA catalogue make you a ‘proper’ adult?

Well, according to a study conducted by the Telegraph, having a savings account and a view on politics – both of which I already have – are signs of being an adult. Admittedly, they go on to list things such as owning a ’best’ crockery set and ‘best towels’, which with any luck, is at least twenty years away from where I am now. But then their research also indicates that most people feel grown up when they reach the age of 26. That means I only have four more years until I have to start deciding which of my inanimate objects should be considered my ‘best’.

It’s no wonder that age lies at the heart of existentialism. The number that marks the length of our life is pretty much the only thing we can be certain about. But when considering what it means to be 20 and 40 it seems that, in most cases, the differences are purely subjective.

Chris Edwards - CynicalCME

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