Youth is a perpetual merry-go-round. It’s a neverending circle of man-made, golden-gilded horses. They never stop moving, and yet they are static- stuck in a constant, and inevitable, state of stagnancy. Merry-go-rounds may always be moving, but does anything ever really change? 

Youth is somewhat like this. From the outside, it may seem fun. The time of your life, the ride of your life- or so they say. There’s music, movement, joy, laughter. 

But let me tell you, youth is utterly overrated. 

Some may say that being young is the best time of your life- you don’t have frown lines, your boobs don’t hang terribly low, your parents may or may not pay your phone bills, and thus there is really nothing to worry about. Worries don’t come until you’ve graduated college and have to get a big-kid job and retire your Forever21 purse for a stiff looking briefcase, right? 

Wrong. Lies. No, there’s definitely some truth to that, but being young and having a brain that isn’t fully developed quite yet can have its difficulties as well. 

Here’s the main thing that I’ve learned about most young people: none of us know what the hell we’re doing (except for Timothee Chalamet, and the occasional self-proclaimed geniuses here and there. They’re all doing fine, I’m sure). As for the rest of us, we have no clue what we’re doing. We’re pursuing degrees that we may or may not be actually passionate about, we have strange, invisible hormones in us that cause us to do, feel, and say strange things. We post photos of ourselves on Instagram, solely because we are subconsciously craving validation and attention from people whose opinions will never truly affect us, and yet we feel the need to keep them updated on the surface-level happenings of our lives. We apply to internships because we are told that fetching coffee (without pay, of course) is the golden gateway to our ultimate success. 

This is our youth. This is the neverending cycle that we, or society, or whatever else, has stuck us in. It’s not particularly bad, and maybe we’re privileged to have fetching coffee for high-paid executives be one of the low-points of our early 20’s, but it’s what it is. This is our youth. This is our youth unless we do something to change it. 

So here’s what I think: fuck our youth. Honestly, fuck it. Fuck the path that anyone has ever set for you. Get rid of it. Pave over it with all of the things that you want to really, actually, truly do with your life- which I highly doubt includes fetching coffee for others and posting an obscene amount of selfies so the people you graduated high school with can see how you actually don’t look that different than you did before, even though you think you do. Turn off everything that doesn’t matter, and turn your attention towards the things that do, whatever that may be. Unplug, and plug in. Life is about more than pre-paved roads and expectations. Life should be more than worrying so much about whatever is probably inevitable, like frown lines and saggy boobs and being slightly more prone to Diabetes than you were before. 

So, yeah. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that we should create our own definition of youth, and our own definition of happiness. It’s corny, but it’s your ticket off of whatever lame merry-go-round it is that you’re currently on.