The Easiest Part of Life

Warning: I’ve stumbled upon a molehill and I am about to make a mountain out of it.

I keep seeing a meme that says “High school graduates, congratulations on completing the easiest part of life.”

Really? I think that’s some BS.

In high school, everything is new. You have virtually no perspective from experience so everything seems monumentally important regardless of its objective importance. You are expected to act like an adult but are still treated like a child. There are precious few markers that provide any comfort suggesting that you might be doing anything right and most of them are false flags. Hormones, acne, ever evolving social expectations, first romance, sexual maturity/immaturity, undeveloped frontal lobe, curfew, seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what you eat, drink, read, watch and listen to. Everyone is judging you all the time in a desperate attempt to reassure themselves that they are not already a complete failure. Imposter syndrome is not an occasional experience, it is a 24/7 lifestyle.

Your “job” for which you do not get paid is to be lectured about mostly uninteresting topics presented by mostly uncompelling presenters being constantly gaslit by people suggesting that everything you are “learning” is going to be important for adulthood when you live with actual adults who could not do algebra to save their lives which is actually fine because their lives never depend on it even though your algebra teacher absolutely acts like it will. …and don’t get me started on cursive.

I mean, yes life get’s more complex as you go. And the challenges become bigger and weightier and the obligations mount. Obviously. But your perspective and abilities also increase exponentially.

I know it’s just a meme, so a valid response to this post would be: “calm down, it’s just supposed to be funny.” I get that. It is kinda. But for anyone who just graduated or knows someone who has, I also think it is deeply self-centered to diminish someone else’s accomplishments, fundamentally misguided to assume that your stress is somehow more significant than someone else’s and unnecessarily dark and cynical to send an 18 year old the message that it is all down hill from here.

Every life at every age has significant and sometimes overwhelming challenges for those living it. Better to just celebrate success than quantify, qualify and compare it.