By Gabriel Bernales
We were expecting a roar — loud, cinematic, and certain. We were told since the dawn of time that the moment when we hit our 20s, the world would be our oyster and all hell would break loose in the best way possible. It is called the ‘Roaring Twenties’ for a reason, promising us the glorious pinnacle of the human experience in a decade dipped in gold. But as it turns out, the roar we anticipated has become a tremor. Apparently, there is a fault line in those ‘glorious’ human experience and it’s going to be a bumpy ride along the way.
Lately, my hands have been shaking, not because had my third iced coffee from my go-to cafe that I visit for the attractive server. I’ve been trembling internally from a tremor of realization. A subtle and quiet earthquake of being 22 where the foundations I built for myself aren’t stable for high magnitude. We spend our entirety trying to steady our posture, focus the motion blur from our vision, we have been conditioned to crave, a crave for stability like a statue.
But statues don’t grow.
I’ve decided to hold my breath, if my chair keeps wobbling from its position, I let it. If my career slides into a crack in the fault line instead of staying on the bridge, I let it fall. There is a strange and liberating sensation subverting myself into admitting I am currently on a progress that has a shaky foundation. The roar isn’t the sound of victory but a friction grinding up into a noise of our own expectations.
To be honest, this bumpy ride that I have been for two years and god knows how many years to come feels like the most honest thing I’ve ever done.
