Unpacking the pressure to love your 20s

By Maria George

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There is something everyone always seems to believe:  your twenties are the best decade of your life. 

And for a while, you believe it. It is omnipresent - in movies, on the internet, in people talking about "living it up" in your youth . You're told it's the time to be free, make memories, find yourself, and maybe even have a little fun being lost. And yeah, sometimes it is. But even in trying to just go along with this, there is this nagging feeling that you’re not doing it right because it feels like something’s missing .

There's just so much unknown - about who you are, where you're going, if the path you're on is the right one or something you just stumbled into.

Some days, you're making progress, moving forward. Other days, you're questioning everything - your career, your relationships, your purpose. Should you be doing something more? Should you have it more figured out by now? Are you even built for the thing you thought you wanted, or was that something someone else set for you as a goal?

Friendships change in ways you don't expect. People you once were inseparable from find their way to the background. Some move away, some grow apart, and some you just can't keep up with anymore. And you notice bits of yourself shifting as well - pieces of you that you were accustomed to feeling concrete don't quite feel solid anymore. You begin to notice that things that you thought made you, you, no longer do. It's like the ground beneath you is being rewritten while you're still standing on it.

And underlying all of that is this expectation - like you're supposed to be loving this stage. You're supposed to be living, making memories, living your “prime years” to its potential . You assume everyone around you is living the best years of their life, so why aren't you? There's this unspoken pressure that makes you feel like you should be checking off all of those "best years of your life" boxes. And if you're not? You start wondering if you're doing it wrong.

But maybe the issue isn't how your twenties are turning out - maybe it's that they're supposed to be amazing every second. Maybe they're not the "best" years, but just important ones. Messy, formative, honest. A decade during which you're learning how to do life, not because you've figured it out, but because you haven't yet.

And that's where the magic lies - not in perfect moments, but in the learning, the breakdowns, and the surprises.

So if your twenties don't exactly feel like some highlight reel, that's okay. They're not meant to be some consistent flow of peak experiences. They're meant to teach you things, challenge you, surprise you. It's not meant to be about having it all together or always feeling good. It’s about starting to understand yourself in real ways, even when things feel unclear. You’re not behind, you’re not broken -  you’re just in the middle of becoming. And that’s more than enough.