Meet The Twixters
Alright, it's not the Fockers this time. This post at pinoyexchange.com caught my eyes. The post about "twixters" by ^paolo^. And it reads,
Are you a TWIXTER?
I read this article in Time Magazine while in the bookstore the other day and it kinda hit home personally. Though, this article is mainly focused on American culture... I still felt that it was applicable to myself as well. So, read on and judge for yourself... are you a TWIXTER?
(this is only an excerpt of the article though)
==================
Grow Up? Not So Fast
Meet the twixters. They're not kids anymore, but they're not adults either. why a new breed of young people won't—or can't?—settle down
By LEV GROSSMAN
Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie are friends. All of them live in Chicago. They go out three nights a week, sometimes more. Each of them has had several jobs since college; Ellen is on her 17th, counting internships, since 1996. They don't own homes.
They change apartments frequently. None of them are married, none have children. All of them are from 24 to 28 years old.
Thirty years ago, people like Michele, Ellen, Nathan, Corinne, Marcus and Jennie didn't exist, statistically speaking. Back then, the median age for an American woman to get married was 21. She had her first child at 22. Now it all takes longer. It's 25 for the wedding and 25 for baby. It appears to take young people longer to graduate from college, settle into careers and buy their first homes. What are they waiting for? Who are these permanent adolescents, these twentysomething Peter Pans? And why can't they grow up?
Everybody knows a few of them—full-grown men and women who still live with their parents, who dress and talk and party as they did in their teens, hopping from job to job and date to date, having fun but seemingly going nowhere. Ten years ago, we might have called them Generation X, or slackers, but those labels don't quite fit anymore.
This isn't just a trend, a temporary fad or a generational hiccup. This is a much larger phenomenon, of a different kind and a different order.
Social scientists are starting to realize that a permanent shift has taken place in the way we live our lives. In the past, people moved from childhood to adolescence and from adolescence to adulthood, but today there is a new, intermediate phase along the way. The years from 18 until 25 and even beyond have become a distinct and separate life stage, a strange, transitional never-never land between adolescence and adulthood in which people stall for a few extra years, putting off the iron cage of adult responsibility that constantly threatens to crash down on them. They're betwixt and between. You could call them twixters.
Where did the twixters come from? And what's taking them so long to get where they're going? Some of the sociologists, psychologists and demographers who study this new life stage see it as a good thing.
The twixters aren't lazy, the argument goes, they're reaping the fruit of decades of American affluence (in our case, the fruit of our parents' labor) and social liberation. This new period is a chance for young people to savor the pleasures of irresponsibility, search their souls and choose their life paths. But more historically and economically minded scholars see it differently. They are worried that twixters aren't growing up because they can't. Those researchers fear that whatever cultural machinery used to turn kids into grownups has broken down, that society no longer provides young people with the moral backbone and the financial wherewithal to take their rightful places in the adult world. Could growing up be harder than it used to be?
The sociologists, psychologists, economists and others who study this age group have many names for this new phase of life—"youthhood," "adultescence"—and they call people in their 20s "kidults" and "boomerang kids," none of which have quite stuck. Terri Apter, a psychologist at the University of Cambridge in England and the author of The Myth of Maturity, calls them "thresholders."
******************
Here's a say from a twixter, if I could be classified as one.
Guilty. Opo, ako. Guilty dito. Kahit na beinte tres anyos pa lang ako. Di kaya mid-life crisis yung ganto kesa tawaging twixters? Well, mid-life crisis is a state while twixters are the people who might be in that state.
It's been almost three years since I got my college diploma. Pero sa totoo lang, di pa ko nakaka-move on. Eto na lang nga lagi hirit ko sa mga kaibigan ko na kung gaano ko nami-miss ang lahat ng may kinalaman sa college. Siguro kasi mas carefree ko nun. Mas laidback. Less worries. Mas free spirited. Ngayon? Naku. Unang-una ko nang nasasa-isip, eh ang mag-generate ng pera sa lubos ng aking makakaya for security. Ako kaya ang panganay. So, naiisip ko din yung time na may sarili na kong buhay. Alam mo yun.
Pero di pa ko mag-aasawa. Di pa pede. But I've thought about marriage even during college days. "I would be married by the age of 25," that's what I've told myself. I'm 23. Two years to go. *kamot-ulo* Parang ayoko pa. Hehe!
Ang dami, dami, dami, dami ko pang gustong gawin at pag-aksayahan ng panahon. Tamo, a. May mga tatapusin pa ko. May mga gusto pa kong matutunan. May mga gusto pa kong ipagpatuloy. May mga sisimulan pa din ako. Basta nakahilera na yang mga plano na yan. Pero ang pagpapamilya? Naku. Wag muna.
Ganito yata talaga ang iniiwasan lalo na ng mga lalaki - ang pag-aasawa o ang buhay may-asawa. Biruin mo, lalaki lahat ang may responsibilidad. Di ko naman sinasabing walang maitutulong ang babaeng asawa. Halos lahat lamang ng pag-iisip kung pano mapapabuti ang pamilya, e nasa lalaki yun. Syempre may ego di kami kaya dapat kaya naming magdala ng isang pamilya, na kaya naming mag-provide, na kaya naming patatagin at bigyan ng magandang buhay ang lahat sa pamilya. Masyado na bang ambisyoso? Pero ganun talaga. Security, dude. Security. :bleh:
Isang point sa article na nasa itaas, e yung pag-"grow up". Heller! Are you people? Eh, lahat naman kaya may child inside. I mean, there's a child in everyone of us. Plus, boys will always be boys. Sabi nga ng iba, "Men never grow up." Lahat naman, e may certain phase in their lives kung san nagsisimula silang umusad. Mag-grow kumbaga. Pero di naman siguro applicable yung growth spurt dito. It's how one matures siguro. Yung development. Yung learning experience everyday. Yung how well or how bad you get by each and every single day.
Adolescence and adulthood? Is there any difference? Ano ba yun? Umabot ako sa ganitong edad na di ko alam? Di naman. Siguro I'm stuck between adolescence and the young adult stage. Take note, it's young adult. I'm not yet a full blown adult. Though I know I could impregnate a fertile lady. But not yet. Just a young adult.. a young adult, buddy.
I think the bottom line about twixters is all about career or their passion in life. I don't want to generalize the idea. Some might be busy dealing with their chosen profession. Some might still be enjoying the dating game. Others might still be fulfilling their life long dream or something. It's all about being busy.. about maximizing one's potentials. And probably, that's what's affecting the personal, or should I say love life, of my fellow twixters. *ouch*
Give us time, uki.
posted by Arn 
at 11:38 AM
|
<< Home