Twentysomethings who take the time to explore and also have the nerve to make commitments along the way construct stronger identities. They have higher self-esteem and are more persevering and realistic. This path to identity is associated with a host of positive outcomes, including a clearer sense of self, greater life satisfaction, better stress management, stronger reasoning, and resistance to conformityâall the things Helen wanted.
âHow are you free? You have free time during the day when most everyone you know is working. Youâre living on the edge of poverty. You canât do anything with that time.â
âSo, youâre the Outward Bound girl!â For years to come, even on residency interviews, I spent most of the time answering questions about what happened when kids ran away in the wilderness or whether it was safe to swim in a river with alligators ... Identities and careers are made not out of college majors and GPAs but out of a couple of door-opening pieces of identity capital.âMeg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now. Highlighted
"I wish I had experimentedâwith workâin a way I feel I canât right now at almost thirty. I felt a lot of internal pressure to figure it out, but all the thinking I did was really debilitating and unproductive."
With all the attention paid to the urban tribe, however, many twentysomethings have limited themselves to huddling together with like-minded peers. Some are in almost constant contact with the same few people. But while the urban tribe helps us survive, it does not help us thrive. The urban tribe may bring us soup when we are sick, but it is the people we hardly knowâthose who never make it into our tribeâwho will swiftly and dramatically change our lives for the better.
When we make choices, we open ourselves up to hard work and failure and heartbreak, so sometimes it feels easier to not to know, not to choose, and not to do. But it isnât.
In the 21st-century, careers and lives donât roll off an assembly line. We have to put the pieces together ourselves.
Thatâs the way it is: wars always kill the sons, never the fathers who took the decisions.âSophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love. Highlighted
Yes, like Mummy, the library gives you a magic kiss and everythingâs better. Love life in ruins? Hate everyone? Despair over the state of the planet? Headache? Insomnia? Indigestion? Corns? I can tell you, thereâs nothing the library canât cure.âSophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love. Highlighted
Iâd better put my earrings on, you never know.âSophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love. Highlighted
You donât shut yourself up for ten hours a day to write, if everything in your life is absolutely hunky-dory. Writing only happens when somethingâs wrong.âSophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love. Highlighted
Iâm doing the same as Jean-Paul. And she called herself a feminist! Oh, the heartache ⌠Martin and this blonde, no it breaks my heart to imagine that he could be in loveâSophie Divry, The Library of Unrequited Love. Highlighted
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