On Being 21

Written by Subhashree Pattnaik

Once, I was seventeen and young at heart, thinking that I would be young forever. But two years from now, I will be twenty-three and I always think of the feeling that lingers every now and then. I will never be young like that again, even though my youth – half wild and unregretful –  is not much aged. But I was seventeen once and invincible. I think now that when they say you can be eternally young at heart, they construct a collective myth.

That’s what I do: think a lot. My thoughts often dance along the terrible edge of adulting. Most of my independence is made up of this very process of thinking that keeps me stuck between the instant and extreme polarities of an adult life. Twenty-one is full of polarities. I know this because it is a shared experience among people of this age: you have just left your youth and the horror; a cloud of a long, consistent future floats in front of you. There is a contradictory urge to chase after it and then chase it away. They are both very different terms, you see. Impulses that reflect on the very polarity of the emotional experience. 

Modifying Shakespeare’s question – “To Be, or Not to Be”, I wish to ask “To Do or Not to Do”. From an exhausted heart and mind, I can truthfully say that my ability to do something is a dead lot of passion. A passion that once seemed possible to be effortlessly performed. I say I am passionate, but thing I have realized is that passion also requires an effort to keep oneself burning,p performing and doing what one wishes to do.

Doing something at this age, where I have free will and passion, does not come easy either. Am I lazy? Is it too difficult? No. The difficulty arises from the probability that something might go wrong. It is, in fact, too much to handle when you are just learning how to handle yourself in the first place. And am I too lazy to handle myself? Maybe. Sometimes. 

It is a subconscious fear that births itself as one’s teens fade away. Because when you turn twenty-one, you suddenly turn resentful and unable to forgive, not just others but also yourself. The harshest judgment is a result of your own mocking shadow and a questioning reflection. Their silent critiques just add on to the awkwardness of making mistakes at the grand age of twenty-one. At this age, you become more aware of the social conditioning that you had rebelled against all throughout your life. The past tense does not refer to the cessation of the subjective young force, but rather the fact that retaliation now comes in a different form. You retaliate against the very social forces that control you directly. You learn truths that undo your full understanding of a singular aspect. In the bustle of it, your innocence becomes used up and disappears

Sometimes, it becomes difficult to even make coffee, which was something that kept you going for a while back. Should I have this much coffee? Is this dependency an obstruction to the self;  a manipulation tactic and a romanticization of capitalistic consumption? Or is it a colonial habit I have inculcated through years of generational habituation? Or is it just coffee? Can I do it without coffee? But do what exactly? There is so much to do at this age, especially when I have just left the house of memories.

My parents are getting old and my family waits for me. At times,  conversations are full of love and other times, they are rather forceful moves so as not to appear distant and tired. There is a need to do something as soon as possible. Sitting idly is too much of a pressure when performance is more of a subjective than an objective demand. Some desires and yearnings dangle and dance. There are things yet to do, never finished, never on time. Being twenty-one is a state of emergency. To do or not to do? How to? When to? 

I was seventeen once and invincible. I wanted to be seventeen forever. Now, the hangover is gone.