My current twenty-five-year-old friends have a crisis of self-discovery, a cat with anxiety disorder, and a second higher education that is unlikely to be needed. Older relatives regularly sigh, saying, at your age, we were already building cities, and you still don't know what to become. And you know, they are right about external attributes. But this shift in the schedule by a good ten to fifteen years is not the result of mass laziness. It's just that the scenery has changed so much, and the generational shift has been added to the stolen years of the pandemic and war, that the old scenarios look absurd in them.
Labor market
Previously, an engineering or accounting degree was something of a guarantee of a quiet life. You went into an office after university and came out of there to retire, covered in diplomas and geraniums in pots. Now the planning horizon is often narrowed to two weeks – between mass shootings, blackouts or news of mobilization. Professions that seemed promising yesterday are being eaten up today by artificial intelligence or another crisis. Companies appear and disappear faster than you can remember the names of your colleagues. Planning a career for decades ahead in such conditions is not even optimism, it is a form of clinical naivety. We do not know what will happen tomorrow, let alone what will be in demand in five years, so changing directions on the fly has become the only way to stay in the game.
Financial security
My parents didn't seem to have any idea of “saving for a rainy day” in the modern sense. They survived in conditions of scarcity, the nineties, and total uncertainty. Perhaps that's why the generation that grew up in front of them is so terrified of poverty.
Those of us who were lucky enough to be born into or reach the middle class are now manically calculating interest, building up reserves, and paying off loans before even thinking about a mortgage. Having children or buying apartments without a backup is expensive and scary. Of course, this applies to those who have any room for reflection at all. While some carefully build investment portfolios, others, like my friend, leave everything in their hometown at 35 and start life from scratch with one suitcase. But where there is a choice and at least some stability, dry mathematics has won.
Realization
Being just a function that brings home a paycheck has become uninteresting. At some point, the focus has shifted: work has ceased to be just a way to pay the bills and has become a platform for self-expression. Finding a job that doesn’t make you sick on Monday morning is a quest. It takes time, countless probationary periods, layoffs, and crash courses in design or programming. Stories about how someone quits law at 32 and goes to study to be a tactical medic or opens a craft bakery have become our everyday life. It looks like chaos, but in reality it’s just a slow and painful search for a place where you don’t want to howl from boredom or a sense of your own futility.
Conscious relationships
Official marriage has turned from a mandatory program into an option. Getting married because “everyone is already there” or to avoid a lonely old age – these motivations no longer work. Young people (and those who are over thirty, but still stubbornly consider themselves young) are looking for a partner with whom they can not only share their daily life, but also talk. With whom they have the same views on how to spend money and whether to get a dog. This casting sometimes drags on for years, because inner comfort and shared values turn out to be more important than the stamp in the passport that they were once so proud of.
The other side of the coin
But this freedom of choice in an era of total fragility has a rather unpleasant side effect. When dozens of doors open before you — remote work, new languages, the opportunity to change professions — you freeze. This is a paralysis of choice, which is exacerbated by the fear of making long-term decisions when the world around you could collapse at any moment. It is very easy to get stuck in a state of eternal scrolling of opportunities. “What if there is a better job somewhere? A better partner? A better city?” This is how the illusion of “I'll do it later” appears, when the most important decisions are put on hold, because the fear of making a mistake paralyzes more than the mistake itself.
Moreover, modern parenting has become so protective that the financial and emotional umbilical cord is often not cut until you're thirty. This provides great insurance, but it also slows down the moment when you finally recognize yourself as an adult and take responsibility for your actions, even if they're downright stupid.
No, this is not infantilism. It is simply a different route. The world has become more complicated, the rules of the game are being rewritten on the fly, and those who are accused of being slow today are actually just trying not to crash on the corners. They are going at their own pace. And, to be honest, sometimes I think that this slow movement is perhaps the most adequate reaction to reality. We are not slow. We are simply learning to balance on a tightrope during an earthquake. And we are doing it quite well.
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