21

I always refer people to the trusty world of Myer-Briggs personality profiles when I'm accused of over-thinking. I can't help it, I would say. INFJs have a predisposed condition where we can't help but over-analyze every facet of our lives. This almost-crippling mentality has led to many instances where I just stand in a store for, staring at a product while my mind races with possibilities and calculations of every possible scenario that can result from this purchase. No shop-keeper likes a guy who just stands there in a daze, especially if he's salivating over a set of porcelain kitchen knives. Makes me look positively demented. 

But as I turn 21, I couldn't help but wonder, as Carrie often does, what does being 21 mean? A seemingly arbitrary selection of an age that is supposedly the time where we're magically responsible, or at least responsible enough to vote and to drink. There is definitely a thrill of finally being able to get into a bar, to be able to purchase alcohol, to be able to be publicly intoxicated and not give a damn. But is the chase of a drink all 21 really means? It's not as if I've been unable to easily get some alcohol, especially in college and in a town where we spit in the face of drinking-age laws on a weekly basis. 

Is it the symbolism of being a true adult? It is, after all, the final age where people actually look forward to. After this it's gonna be a long road of learning to live with your age instead of celebrating it. I believe our modern world is one where innocence is lost early but maturity is gained late. We have legions of men-child and baby-sluts, possessing both the complicated mindsets and sexuality of adults with the impulses and emotional in-capabilities of children. I have done some very adult things, but at heart I often feel like a child. I feel like I'm masquerading as someone who has things under control, who is able to go out there and conquer it all by himself, but on the inside I feel just as easily bruised as a much younger me would. 

In earlier generations, a 21 year old would have been married with children and earning the bread and butter for his family, but here we are, still living off our parents' money and going to school and being our professors' bitch. A 21 year old in our world really has none of that adult burden; a simple walk down a college's main street with the stumbling drunks (as I have been for many times) would prove as much. We're really all still children. So what does this age mean then? To me, I believe it's a point where I have to recognize that my adult life is ahead of me, and that this is a point of new beginnings. What I do now can no longer be based on the years of childish whims behind me, but instead on this whole new exciting world of adulthood. 

I think that recognizing that I don't have everything figured out is the point of being 21. If nothing else, it's a place to take a pause and reevaluate where I am and where I want to be, because whether we like it or not, the future is coming right at us.