It's hard being a girl and in her twenties

It seems like everyone is watching Girls. And if you haven't heard of Lena Durham, well, don't know where you've been hiding. I find the series hilarious; it got me laughing so I gotta say, I kind of like it. The lost generation. The misunderstood. It's like finally, a show about almost mimics real life. Or at least the issues that we, real-life girls are facing. Not all of our issues (yet), but some of it. I think to a certain extent we struggle with the question of where am I going in life, what do I want in life, or some even say, what's my purpose of living in this life. I know that I struggle, for sure. There are people who know exactly what they are doing and are very passionate about where they want to be and know very well that they are well on their way to get there, and I know a few of these people personally, and I am definitely not one of these people.

Take for example, courting and dating. The excitement, exhilaration, the potential hope of meeting the one, and the chance for that moment in time whereby your life is going to change forever in a way that you don't know just yet. I am a proponent of dating as many people as you possibly can, I liken this process to research. And why the hell not, especially if you can. My parents will kill me as soon as they read this because they obviously have a different view. But trust me when I say that I form mine not because I want to rebel against them. It is because I believe, just like anything else in life, meeting the one is a process that we can't rush, somewhere in that process we need to discover ourselves (or at least part of ourselves that we have not discovered before), we get to know what we want, or at the very minimal, what we don't want, and take it from there. And we need to do this knowing that there is an option for exit, simply because just like anything else in life, this is a trial and error. It is an experiment that involves two adults (or more) and their feelings, so there is that risk that someone, anyone, will get hurt. That someone may be you. This risk may or may not be worth taking depending on how important it is for you to have that moment in time whereby your life is going to change forever in a way that you have not yet begun to anticipate. No risk no gain.

Another thing that we all struggle with is our careers. The struggle, in my opinion, is not so much about us not knowing what we want to do because we inherently know what it is we want to do (whether we are honest with ourselves or not is a different issue altogether); the struggle is more about leaving something we are good at and starting something that we really want to do. In a way, the challenge that we are struggling with is more universal in nature: leaving the comfortable life and starting something new, fear of the unknown and the uncertainties of this new path that looks alluring and something we think we may enjoy more, which does not mean that we dislike our current professions, but rather we are curious of exploring a different option that appears to be more attractive to us. This is a very personal choice and one that is perhaps the hardest to make. Because if you ask someone from your current profession, they will say stay in this profession because that's the only thing they've known all their lives. If you ask someone else from a different profession, they will say do it for the same reason, that's the only thing that they can speak about. Everyone can only speak about their experiences and their choices may not be suitable for you. This is not a bad thing per se, chance is that most people are actually honest in their responses, but we must recognise that these responses are very subjective in nature and may be biased towards the individual. Or to put it differently: you gotta decide what's best for yourself and run with it. Easier said than done. But nothing worth doing in this life is ever easy, so it is worth all the hard work and deliberations and the sleepless nights of you working up enough courage to make the decision in the first place. The decision that you know is the best and most suitable for you. 

I admire the character of Hannah Horvath who stuck to her guns of being a writer, struggling to find employment while being forced to be independent by her parents. Will people acknowledge that being twenty-something often means we hardly have any spare cash. Seriously, starting out in our career and being independent often mean most of our salaries goes towards this thing called rent, and that paying this thing takes some time to get used to (i.e. the adjustment period) because for all of our lives we have lived free of rent thanks to our parents who put roofs over our heads. Plus the fact that we are young and we want to have fun, and we are still figuring out so many things about ourselves including what we want in life, that just mean our lives are full of experiments, and the outcome of these experiments may or may not be favourable. We all make mistakes. We've been told that we need to make all these mistakes while we are young, and so we experiment. This does not mean we are reckless in our experiments, in fact, most of us actually think about it and devise ways to make it successful. But just because we want to be successful does not mean that we are immune from failure. I have come to realise that the good people in my life are the ones who are forgiving and tolerant of the mistakes that I make. They are the people that say: ok, thanks for telling me, now go fix it. And then, they don't even bring it up. But I remember my mistakes and I occasionally still get mortified from thinking about them. Of course I strive not to repeat them, which is why I remember them (and get mortified) from time to time.

Sometimes I think being young is so ... ironic. This is meant to be the time of your life. Lately I am beginning to wonder if older people are saying that only to make the younger ones feel better. I guess I belong to the camp that regards life is hard, and it is beautiful because it is hard. I don't know why this is the case, but whenever someone says that life is beautiful, I somehow equate that with life is easy, which we all know, is not true. Sometimes life is easy, but most of the time, it is hard work.