Move Over, Homer, This is MY Odyssey

Any semi-educated individual should be relatively familiar with Homer's The Odyssey, whose wandering protagonist spends ten years en route home to Ithaca after the fall of Troy. His brilliance and his hubris are perhaps his most notable character traits, but his epic, decade-long journey is far from facile.

An opinion piece in The New York Times this week discussed a different kind of odyssey: a stage in life that occurs between adolescence and adulthood and is marked by uncertainty, anxiety, fluidity, and prolonging inevitabilities.

The article, by Op-ed columnist David Brooks, discusses this new period of life as the least understood of all the life phases, perhaps only for its newness. He writes:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.

They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.

In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

If that isn't hitting the proverbial nail on the head, then I'm not sure what is. Perhaps it's because I am part of the vagabond 20-something demographic, but I applaud the definition of this new life-phase. In this sense, the word odyssey as a description for this particular period of life is semantically synonymous with the term adultalescence, which William Safire included in his On Language piece entitled "Campuspeak," the text of which I posted on October 7. Hallelujah! I'm not the only 20-something who has "graduate[d] into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering," as Brooks notes Robert Wuthnow, social scientist at Princeton, explaining in his article.

Personal aside: I especially appreciate the part about delaying marriage, children, and employment, because a large group of my Texas friends are gainfully employed, married, and expecting. To date, I've either been a bridesmaid or in the house party of seven weddings (make that eight come November) -- not to mention the other handful I've been invited to -- and I have six pregnant friends and three with children already.

Mom, Dad, have no fear. Brooks continues:

The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.

I'm 25 years young. I have two undergraduate degrees and two years of "real-world" work experience under my belt, and, come January, I'll be the proud holder of an M.A. The future is uncertain, though certainly bright, especially considering that in the footsteps of Odysseus, I figure I have at least three more years to wander.