I am 26 years old and have just finished my studies. It is with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am relieved that I am done with a life in which I never quite found my place. At the same time, I am saddened that these years did not fulfill the expectations I had for this time. The 20s are a period of life that is often hyped as “the time of our lives”. We are told that time is precious, because after all, you are only young once. But in that there is also an underlying pressure on everything you have to achieve. Now is the time for you to try and fail, “live life” and “dare to have fun”. Paradoxically, we know that very many young people are lonely. Could the loneliness have something to do with our lack of meeting places for young people, with space for the diversity that is undoubtedly there? If you are young in Norway today, it seems that you are expected to have a certain lifestyle, which everyone takes for granted. I wish there was more room for diversity. Space for those of us who don’t feel at home in the culture of partying, drinking and one-night stands. I feel in many ways out of step with my own generation. What I want doesn’t match what many of my peers want. And that makes me feel left out. I don’t want to download Tinder because it’s “lazy”, and I don’t get the point of swiping people right and left at random just for fun. I’d rather go for a walk in the woods than binge watch series on Netflix, and feel better in dinner parties than out on the town. At the same time, I feel bad about myself because I don’t like what I feel I should like. I don’t want to grow old and regret that I didn’t “live life”. Music that is a little too loud echoes from a speaker that is a little too small in a collective on Løkka. The sofa is filled with people laughing, wailing and humming the lyrics to songs I don’t know. People sit in a circle around a table overflowing with alcohol, and I hesitate to put out my Fanta exotic. It looks like everyone is enjoying themselves at the spring, and I wonder if I’m the only one who gets an increased heart rate from the whole scheme. As a non-drinker, it’s hard to feel part of the community when the most important social gatherings almost always happen over a beer. If you don’t drink alcohol, a large part of the social part falls away in your 20s. When the others have to go on after the spring, I come up with a white lie to escape. Being alone in my student dorm may be lonely, but I get even lonelier in a community I don’t feel a part of. Being alone is better than the alternative. As a new student, it already starts in sponsor week, which I skipped completely because I couldn’t bear to be the only one who doesn’t drink. I didn’t want to feel outside even before my studies had started. I wonder how many people have been in the same situation. The alcohol alone is not the problem. I had a naive hope that drinking games were reserved for adolescence, but to my great disappointment they escalated another notch during my college years. I’m not afraid to say I’ve never done the things others claim they’ve done, but I’m afraid of the reactions. The silence. Why is there an insatiable quest for status to brag about the sickest things in bed? I don’t care how many sex partners you’ve had, which positions you’re most comfortable in, or how you sound when you have an orgasm. I generally don’t care much about hearing about other people’s superficial sex lives. I care about who you are as a person, how you feel and what you do when you’re not partying. I generally just enjoy chatting together. Why can’t this be enough of an activity in itself? The loneliness comes as a consequence of the prejudice that all young people like the same thing. I don’t want to drink alcohol, go out on the town or swipe on Tinder, but I want the same opportunities to be social, build friendships and find good relationships that can give me a sense of belonging. To feel belonging, we depend on recognizing ourselves in others. It is paradoxical that we are trying to create a more generous and inclusive society, at the same time that the normality window for how to be is so narrow. In your 20s, you are extra vulnerable, because you are in the middle of a turning point where most things in life are fluid and uncertain. . In an existence without fixed points of reference, it becomes all the more important to create meaningful meeting places. If the meeting places are narrowed down to one way of being social, it is no wonder that many young people feel lonely. I wish the box of what was accepted could be expanded so we didn’t have to resort to an engineered facade to accommodate. The precious time as a young person can be used for so much more than partying and drinking. Space must also be made for that.
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The happy 20s – Statement
