How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?
When Taylor Swift released the Album of Red (Taylor’s Version), I think yeah it’s just an old song reproduced, nothing special to me. But, when I listened the whole songs of the Album as an appreciated to Taylor also to reminisce the moments with the song, then come the song “Nothing New” it makes me melodramatic, emotional, sad, and contemplating of what was happened in my life so far, especially after turned 20s. When I read the lyric “How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22” I had to pause then took a screenshot, cause the lyric are relatable.
https://open.spotify.com/track/01K4zKU104LyJ8gMb7227B?si=170f83e4eca94ad0 (you can listening this song while read this article).
How different it was listening now that we are older and have lived experienced more rather than we listening at high school?
I am 24 years old now. While a part of me is still want to trust with my dreams, my vision, my plans for my future. And a part of me is also nervous, scared, confused, and surrender. There are so many things deviated from our imagination or our plans when we were in high school. As if we already know too well about the pattern of life, graduated from high school — get into university — getting a dream job — Married with someone we love — Have children (even we can imagine how easy to take care of children without a burden) — growing old — and end up with happy ending. WOW! How cute we are at 18 :).
But when after graduated, everything is chaos. How difficult it is to be accepted at the university of our dreams, how hard is it to get a job, apply dozens of times, interview repeatedly, test here and there and if we had a job we still get a pressure whether it’s from our senior, our work, or our colleague. After that, our life is flat. Work — go home — eat — sleep — repeat. We feel stuck and realize that there is nothing new. We are confused what are supposed we do cause we don’t know anything about what are we doing, is it true we are doing this flat life or is it false? Is it the real life or is it just a fantasy? That’s different when we were at high school. Every year we had changed, promoted to the next grade, new teachers, new friends, new class setting, new lessons, everything is pleasure and very exciting.
18 years old, fresh out of high school and full of big dreams. We think being an adult is fun cause it represents independence. Then we entered to the university (around 18–22 years old), at this point we still blurry about real life but we have been introduced with forces us to grow up, become self-sufficient, and be capable of living independently. But after graduated from the University (around 22+ years old) hit and your perspective starts to shift because here is where the real adulting and growing starts. You start realize how little you know and how uncertain everything is. Moreover, you realize that everything is easier said than done and you have to worry about money, no one is coming to save you cause you are now the ‘adult’ and of course you need money to survive.
So good luck for us and cheer up!
