Coming of age ?

Like millions of teenagers all over the world, I also saw a lot of coming of age movies and read novels in which a lost young protagonist finally found his calling, fell in love and saved the world. I eagerly waited for my call to come to me, to “find” myself and more importantly to finally have the realization as to what I want from life. Years went by and I have yet to find my calling.

The early 20s is the age of feeling lost and relating to the protagonist of these coming of age movies. But the thing is the movie goes into the third act, there’s a song montage and the guy gets his life together, finds his true love and there’s a happy ending. Life doesn’t work like that, there are no song montages, love is complicated and nothing truly ever comes to an end. Let’s break it down into the three categories that mostly occupy the mind of any 20 years old. Their work, love & identity.

Work

Let’s look at how my usual week goes, Monday I go to class, I’m motivated. I set some tasks for myself and by evening I’ve accomplished 75%of the said task. At this point I’m tired so I decide to postpone 1-2 tasks for the next day. The next day I try to complete today’s task and yesterday’s too. I’m too exhausted so I just sleep and now I end up oversleeping. Wednesday I’m late for my class. I skip breakfast. I start feeling the effect of skipping meals by 2-3 in the afternoon. I go back home, I’m exhausted and irritated. I order food, I end up overeating and resting, as a result, I don’t accomplish any goals I set for today. Thursday I woke up in time for class but I’ve lost all my motivation because in my mind I’m equating not being productive for a day to completely wasting the week. I go to class and eagerly wait for the weekend. Now I’ve set a new goal for the weekend but something unexpected comes up and all the work I’ve been postponing piles up. I’m overwhelmed by Friday evening. I get anxious by Saturday afternoon and by evening a full-blown panic attack because I’ve wasted yet another week. Sunday I remember the hero from n number of coming of age movies (Wake up sid, Tamasha, It’s kind of a funny story, etc.) so I clean my room, make a list of tasks, I make a plan for the next week and the next week same pattern follows. Soon week turns into months and months into years. Now I’ve accepted that I can’t be productive every day of the year. So where do I keep going wrong? Why can’t I fix my life just as Sid while Aaj Kal Zindagi plays in the background? I think it’s because I’m not supposed to. I’m not failing to achieve my goals because I am not working hard, I’m failing because I’ve set too big of goals for a single day and when I don’t achieve my goals I convince myself that I’m not gonna make it this week also, That self-doubt sets in motion a cycle of anxiety and frustration that continues till Sunday. And then a new cycle starts. My favorite coming of age movie has betrayed me. I can keep cleaning my room with the coming of age tracks playing in the background but I’m not gonna fix my life anytime, my room will be really clean though.

See the thing that the protagonist of any coming of age movie has and the thing that you and I can’t possibly have is plot armor. Ved Vardhan Sahni succeeds because the plot demands him too. Sid figures out his life because that’s when the movie enters its final act. Their story is predetermined, ours isn’t. I can’t magically fix everything in my life in a short duration, its a slow and gradual process that spans over weeks even months. I can keep making list and keep disappointing myself or I can actually appreciate my work and divide it into small portions and try to achieve as much as I can in a single day. Some day I might only read 10 pages, someday I might end up reading a book. And in life you have to give up a few things, No one can do it all. It’s okay to let go of a few things as long as you remember what is important and you know where you need to devote your time. You are succeeding as long as you are better than you were yesterday. As long as you feel you are growing. Set small goals and take baby steps.

Love

Love is slightly more complicated. You can give it your best shot and still fail. Not to say that in work giving your best always assures success but at least you have the self-satisfaction of working hard. In love, if you give it all and still fail, that hard work just torments you. Your coming of age moment is supposed to be one when you figure out who you are and whom you love. It’s the moment when you meet someone that will supposedly change your life forever. This is the point in the plot when Tara meets Ved when Ayesha meets Sid when Naina meets Bunny and their life changes forever. Life doesn’t usually work like that. We don’t meet people who change our life forever like that, who help you find yourself. And weirdly, I’m glad we don’t. To expect someone to save you from yourself and then call it love is a fallacy. Everybody is struggling. I mean Tara saves Ved but who saves Tara? If you think being with Ved is all that she needs, then you are simply refusing to believe that she has her own needs, her problems, problems that Ved’s charm can’t solve. I mean pick up a random group of people and you’ll find that there are more stories of heartbreak than there are of love. Love isn’t as common as people think. It’s rare and if you by some sheer luck succeed at it you should hold on to it. But we’ll talk about the rarity of love some other time. Now by your 20s, you might’ve at least experienced love once or at least you think you have. If not you really shouldn’t worry. Coming of age movies have us believe that once you find love your life begins to sort itself out or vice-versa that once you sort out your life true love walks in your life. It doesn’t really hold. You can be in love and have a messy life, you can figure out all you want in life and still be alone. There’s no correlation. you don’t need to be in love to find your calling. By their 20s everybody has had a few crushes, a few rejections. By now you probably know how it feels like to not have your feelings reciprocated. But most importantly by now, you know what it feels like to move on. That’s the standard process. You love, you get hurt and you move on. Times change and the cycle continues. This doesn’t necessarily devalue your love, it just means that you can fall in love more than once. It just means love is just a part of your life and not something your life revolves around. Simply put you can keep longing for Tara and she might never come. Sometimes you have to be your own Tara.

Finding yourself

The biggest idea behind the coming of age movies is the journey that our protagonist takes to find himself/herself. The prerequisite of this journey is the idea that somewhere along the way you lost yourself. Mark Manson once wrote that the longing for a positive experience is in itself a negative experience because pursuing something only reinforces that you lack it in the first place. So this pre-requisite condition of being lost raises the question, when exactly did we lose ourselves and how? I don’t think it’s about being lost, I think it’s about outgrowing the compliant child inside yourself, the child that went along with the decisions others take for them. Now you can’t just let someone else dictate your life, but you can’t also think and make a decision for yourself because it is scary, because it’s a huge responsibility and all your life you have been taught to fear failure so now you dread it. I think it’s this very dread that makes us feel lost or more accurately that we romanticize and turn into “feeling lost”. Hoping that someday we’ll find our selves and this feeling will go away. Not gonna happen, You will continue to feel lost, you’ll continue to feel this dread so long as you don’t take responsibility for your decision because that’s how you grow. By owning your mistakes and shortcomings, by accepting all the hurt and loneliness that comes not with the grief of a child but with the grace of an adult. You are not lost, you are just afraid and it’s okay to be afraid. You don’t need to find yourself, you need to build yourself. You are the same you from 10 years ago, now you just know how to deal with life a little better. 10 years in the future you’ll be even better at dealing with it. See there won’t be a single turning point that’ll change your life forever, it’s an accumulation of experiences that you gather over the years. And unlike coming of age movies you don’t find yourself as the movies enter the third act, but you can build yourself, you can grow. Maybe you’ve found yourself long ago, you just don’t know it yet because somethings are only clear in retrospect. And when you look in retrospect and see how much you’ve grown I imagine that would feel rewarding. Maybe it’s the same feeling that Ved gets as he runs through Simla or maybe it’s something entirely different.