Kids These Days: Part II

In a recent column, David Brooks gave us an alternative to the young professionals: the unrushed adventurers. What defines them? Well...

After graduation, they’ll spend a few years in different jobs, maybe they’ll go to graduate school and then they’ll figure out something more definite – or not. They’ll live in another country or two before they hit 30, or they’ll spend a year hiking/fishing/climbing/sailing/being outdoors. They are pretty good at packing all of their belongings in a car, or even in a few pieces of luggage. They’re not actively looking for “the one” and they’re not planning on doing anything permanent anytime soon. In life, in love or in work, they’re open to the idea of changing any plans they had because they don’t know all their options yet. They've got nothing against stability, but they don’t see a need for it, personally. They have long-term goals… they’re just not sure what they are yet. They are floating through their Odyssey years.

Wait, did I say they? Cause it sounds a lot like a lot of my friends and more than a little like me, dabbling in various interests, ambitious if uncertain, easily excited and uneasily committed. Yuck, it's always annoying to be pegged (by David Brooks, no less).

It’s definitely a luxury to be able to dawdle through our twenties like this, but according to Brooks’s column, everybody who can is doing it these days. "Odyssey years" is his term to describe the time when we’re off trying to figure things out before life requires that decision be made. No longer is finding yourself just a college thing. We’re extending the indecision into “real life.”

Personal mentality is part of it, but even more than that, it’s a function of a cultural change (hence the merit as a Times Op-Ed). The whole transition lifestyle has become a perfectly valid post-graduation option these days, right up there with going to work for the man or starting a family. And if my friends are any example of the larger population, it’s actually way more popular. Just to take a handful of examples:

Brian and Stephen went to Ramallah in the West Bank to teach in a Quaker school, neither of them Quaker or having extensively studied the Middle East. Anna took a road trip across the country and worked as a waitress in Oregon. Heather and Amon are working on environmental something-or-other in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia for a year. Robert left Wall Street and is traveling to a different Asian city every week and writing a novel. Then there are the friends in Peace Corps, Americorps, and Teach for America, all programs which last a year or two by design and draw in students from every background. And I’m in a country I had never heard of until last year, unsure of where I’ll be two months from now, or eight months from then, but I imagine it will be two different places.

The adventure itself is good. The tricky thing is we aren’t always sure of our reasons for taking it, and that’s where we should be wary. Brooks writes that we’re not just wasting time; on the contrary, people are doing it with very professional goals. We’re very aware of how we can use these experiences in the future… what's disconcerting is that we might be primarily using them for those goals. We’ve been heavily groomed in interview skills and programmed to pursue extra curriculars and encouraged if not forced to seek out unique life experience that will impress someone at some point. We're so conditioned that we’ve almost made routine the quest for adventure, forgetting that the adventure has its own inherent value.

To some degree, it’s fine to combine those experiences with more concrete objectives. What’s not okay is how doing so can keep you from living in the moment. Contextualizing youth in terms of adulthood keeps us from indulging in full revelry, and leads us to take ourselves and all we do much too seriously. And on that point, Brooks paints a very vivid picture of the ambitious kid who has lost the free-spirited excitement for life. In a different article, he wrote about professionalized adolescence with a clever allusion to modern-day interpretations of Kerouac’s On The Road. It’s worth reading, but to sum up:

“If Sal Paradise were alive today, he’d be a product of the new rules. He’d be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a MacArthur grant.”

Though impressive, the new-rules Sal is a tool, almost pathetic in his desire to impress. He’s constantly caught up in how he’ll fit his experience onto a resume, and constantly updating his resume. He goes on adventures bescause that’s what you do now and it makes great cocktail party conversation. He is interested in this stuff, but mostly because everyone else is. The new Sal isn't the protagonist of On the Road, but rather of Getting to the End of the Road.

So the question is – is that why we do it? Do we embark upon these travels and take up these causes because we’re wowed by them or because we know others will be? And if it’s a bit of both, are we finding the right balance?

I thought about this in the context of Nicholas Handler’s article (see previous post), because in a lot of way, Brooks and Handler are describing the same person. Handler’s Che t-shirt kid will soon grow into Brook’s power yoga grad student. He will replace the trendy and impressive activist causes he pursued in college with the trendy and impressive Odyssey years experiences. Our adventures, like our activism, assume a professional veneer inspired by current fads, and we’re a little bit opportunistic about everything.

Sliminess aside, the most detrimental part of this habit is the toll it takes on the bright young overachievers. College was my Odyssey primer when, with my friends who wanted to accomplish everything and often thought we could, we forgot how not to be stressed and prided ourselves on being able to sleep the least. We obviously cared about what we were doing but we probably cared more about how much we got done, so we lived out an unofficial competition who could collect the most marks of success: exotic travels, fancy internships, leadership titles and competitive grants – these were our gold stars, good for both social status and personal statements.

In the end, we got really good at taking ourselves seriously. We might have gotten a lot done, but the way we did it was a little bit sad. Looking back on that, I want my Odyssey years to be a chance to step away from the exhausting and not very healthy trend of investing all of yourself in everything. Because sometimes you have to remind yourself that some things are more important than the important stuff. That there doesn’t have to be a point to everything, and the trivialities of life are ultimately just as valuable as the big stuff. That walking on a dirt road or dancing like a fool or staying up till sunrise are not the stuff of interview banter but they are the secret behind a reminiscing smile that will far outlast your latest resume. A great thing about those moments and experiences is that they are for you and they are for your friends but you’re not going to be judged on them, in an interview or anywhere else. They are yours.

Brooks ends the Sal Paradise article with this:

“Someday some hypermanic kid will produce a moronically maxed-out adventure odyssey that will spark the overdue rebellion among all the over-pressured SAT grinds, and us grumpy midlife critics will get to witness a new Kerouac, and the greatest pent-up young-life crisis in the history of the world.”

I hope it happens when I’m still in my Odyssey years. It sounds like good fun. :)