Tell me about your 20’s…


A few nights ago I was having dinner with my partner Vico, his parents and some of their friends. As we spoke, some of the adults at the table (I am 23 — and I definitely don’t feel like an adult) started talking about how they felt when they were our age. Joana, Vico’s mom, talked about how anxious she felt during that time. She had graduated from university in Munich and was working on her PhD in anthropology, but didn’t have any idea how she could use it. Axel, one of their friends, told us about how he left Berlin and worked at a woodshop in the mountains of northern Germany. His wife, Sibylle, started laughing about how nothing will ever compare to how romantic that wilderness workshop was for him.
Vico’s dad, Stephan, said that he was actually pretty calm during his 20’s– at least when it came to his career. He said that he just felt something would work out.
I don’t really know how I feel. As I listened to them tell their stories I realized they had had so much time to think about their 20’s. How those years fit into their life narratives, how certain events led to important discoveries.
For me, none of those plot points have solidified. Sometimes this is really nice because it lets me feel free, amorphous. Sometimes I feel like I could just get on a plane and go to Madrid and it wouldn’t really matter to anyone else. But I am also a very ambitious person. I get anxious about what I am doing with my life, what I am creating, if I will ever be able to realize something which corresponds to what I want from life. I want to make something beautiful, and if I can’t do that I want to be useful.
Hearing these stories did something which I think is very normal– they relativised my situation. However, I feel like this explanation is a reduction of what I felt in the moment. Many people believe that hearing stories from your ‘elders’ makes you feel less alone, it helps you see your life with a broader perspective and more space. This is definitely true, and I think a very important practice. But I think there was also something else happening. I felt a sort of unmistakable draw to become a collector.
I wanted to collect experiences from a specific time in people’s life. More specifically, from a time which is generally characterized by society as the decade of exploration, confusion, and bizarre or radical choices. It struck me that I wanted an archive of stories about people trying to figure out their 20’s. Not only to help myself ‘grow-up’ but also to understand what this lost decade means to people.
I don’t just want inspirational stories, people being confused and then finding themselves, but simply a collection of memories. This is why I liked Stephan’s contribution. It wasn’t really helpful to me or Vico, neither of us can at all relate to the feeling that it ‘will all just work out’, but I appreciated it for its contribution to the collection. Whether it is true or not I can’t tell. The archive doesn’t judge the validity of its contributors memories. It just collects them, and leaves the judgement for the listener. They could be used for inspiration, for guidance, or maybe just to remember that there is more time and more space.
Since this dinner, I have started to interview people above the age of 35 about their 20’s. I ask them what the predominant feeling of that decade was for them, if they had a particular inspiration or passion, and what it is like for them to reflect on that time now. I would like to continue these interviews, and I don’t yet know what will come of them, but hopefully as I go clarity will come. If you are interested in talking to me about the project, or doing an interview, feel free to send me an email at sek.powers@gmail.com.
