The most self-indulgent whinge in 2025 is dedicated to 20-somethings panicking about what their life purpose is and how they should be spending their time.
In Australia, the majority of us have breathed a sigh of relief in celebration of the mediocre democratic achievement that is the reelection of the Labor Party – which mostly only happened because the alternative was so terrible.
The climate crisis will continue to be addressed with the urgency of a fire department drafting a 10-year innovation roadmap while the station burns down, the government response to the genocide in Palestine will continue to reek of indifference, and the PM will pridefully celebrate “Australia Day” – but we can rest easy in the knowledge that we staved off MAGA politics for another few years.
This delightful return to the status quo means my mental capacity is free to go back to its regularly scheduled programming of the existential panic that characterises being a 26-year-old who feels the prick of a tear anytime someone mentions a “five-year life plan”.
Sylvia Plath is a testament to the fact that the girlies have been panicking about what they should be doing with their lives since the 1930s (at least). Sylvia’s figs, referenced in the Bell Jar, have become a frequent touchpoint of conversations amongst me and my girlfriends.
Should we move to London? How do you feel about a commune? Should I start a clothing brand? Such questions constantly rattle off into the group chat, over a glass of wine, over a bottle.
But the last thing the planet needs is more product, and we know nothing about ethically sourcing fabric. Marry for money, ha. Backpack, touch some grass, learn yoga, scrimp to afford a one-bedroom unit without a carpark not too far from the city; but also, you’ll definitely need a car to reach the closest Woolies metro.
Do my Master’s in something? The thought of more debt makes me want to hyperventilate into a brown paper bag. The more I owe, the more I am tied to my office chair and the less autonomy I have over my time. I don’t want to operate at the mercy of indexation and interest rates.
How did Taylor Swift release 1989 at 25?
ChatGPT has become a source of all-knowing and is asked for astrological guidance in moments of hazy mental exhaustion. The inaccessibility of mental healthcare has also meant more of us, particularly women, are turning towards AI as a substitute for actual therapy. Terrifying, but understandable – it’s the modern equivalent of the psychic hotline, but likely more accurate, less personal and with greater risk of the data being weaponised someday.
Plus, be wary of personifying your new therapist – the extension of basic pleasantries like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ is costing the weapons-loving founders millions, let alone the additional precious resources expended by our newfound AI dependence. Just another guilt trap to factor into navigating 2025 and beyond.
Sylvia Plath wrote of a woman sitting at the base of a fig tree. Unable to decide which fig to choose, she considers each one in detail, eventually watching as they fall from the tree, wrinkle, and rot.
The figs are a metaphor for the branching pathways Ms Plath saw before her. One fig was the pursuit of a career in poetry, another a life as a professor, an editor, an Olympian. One fig represented existing in Europe, another Africa, another South America.
Gen Z, Zillenials, Millenials and the newly-anointed Gen Alpha have been granted access to social media, providing a visual aid to consume in tandem to our wonderings. I’ve always known I could be a camp counsellor at Camp America, but now I can watch what Poppy-from-Edmonton’s pre-camp morning routine looks like on TikTok. She seems ecstatic to be there. Would I too be more chipper at 7am if that was my life?
The highlight reel consists of our friends eating baguettes alongside the Seine, acquaintances purchasing their white-picketed “forever homes” (mortgage and/or assistance from the Bank of Mum and Dad not pictured), our ex-best friend’s little sister’s new job in Korea, the first of our peers’ babies (are we doing that now?), and Nara Smith’s overly poised balance of sourdough, tradwife and NYC-based model.
With innumerable versions of life algorithmically shoved down our throats, it can feel like we are choking.
To have the energy and options to contemplate is a privilege. Genocide, war, climate change, late-stage fucking capitalism, the domestic violence epidemic, Trump, the cost of living, that three-legged dog in Ohio that’s been returned to the shelter again… all are constant sources of worry. We care, but our concern exhausts us, so sometimes we disconnect.
This too is a privilege – to be able to look away from realities that aren’t at our front doors. It sounds grotesque, but also feels somewhat essential for the productivity our lives depend on.
I remember calling in sick from my retail job in Aotearoa/New Zealand at the tail-end of 2019, in utter despair when the bushfires raged through Australia. The orange glow from the fires was visible across the Tasman Sea. I looked like I had a double-whammy eye infection from all the tears.
Missing that shift cost me around $100 – a substantial hit to my weekly income. I’ve since learned that sometimes, I need to put my phone down.
We all know that however we spend our time, it should be conscientious, community-minded and in pursuit of resolution to the world’s wicked problems. Yet financial strain causes us to take jobs that fill our fridges and petrol tanks, leaving our insides hollow and making us feel as though we’re simply treading water.
My politically-minded peers take on public servant jobs and strap themselves into the rollercoaster that is serving the government. My post-grad buddies side-hustle in cahoots with a yet-to-be-released AI chatbot. Another friend quietly switches from her creative writing degree towards architecture: a “meal ticket”. She isn’t fulfilled, but her parents are proud because she’s now able to save for her own apartment.
I grieve versions of myself I don’t even want. I am melancholic for the past and future simultaneously.
I watch videos of homesteaders (the vaccinated kind) growing their vegetables and riding horses in overalls and feel a pang of jealousy. Within the same hour, I yearn to be unintentionally cool in Soho (any one will do), oat matcha in hand, waving down a cab to attend a warehouse sale. I then long to be coastal, bohemian and learning to surf on weekends. (Notably, at no point have I wanted to be an astronaut. Katy Perry and Mrs. Jeffrey Bezos can blaze that trail and ruin our collective carbon footprint, and I feel no envy.).
The many possible realities that swim before me cannot co-exist, but in not making a choice, I am defaulting to what I have always been doing: playing it safe and doing the full-time office thing. By all standards, this is fine, but it also doesn’t feel right.
The figs will continue to fall and whither, and our hearts will starve.
COVID devoured our twenties, and now that I’m rounding up to 30, my before-kids list is still markedly undented.
Do I even want children? Can someone just tell me, yes or no. Maybe I’ll just get another dog, name him Fergus, and that will scratch the itch. But, as the doctor at my most recent IUD-insertion appointment told me, I don’t want to wait too long to make up my mind.
The time pressure associated with having ovaries feels akin to a game of Russian roulette; maybe I’ll pull the trigger and be told by someone in a lab coat that I’ve timed out and my reproductive organs are just a haven for dust.
My contemporaries and I have grown up in a time where patience is no longer a virtue – it doesn’t need to exist. My apartment functions as a synthetic universe of isolation where I needn’t move beyond the ground-floor mailroom to acquire everything I need and more.
I can eat hand-rolled chilli noodles and watch the latest season of ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives’ while colouring in my Amazon-acquired picture book, all without engaging with a soul. It’s comfortable – cosy even, at least for the first 90 minutes, then it just feels devoid of meaning, especially when I couple it with a second screen showcasing reels of someone’s rescue goat sanctuary in Menorca. Why didn’t I start one of those?
Marx’s theory of alienation sometimes hits a little too close to my apartment.
I’ve been talking to my colleagues about Sylvia Plath too – women a few generations above me who also have had to navigate and make sense of the world, but in a different way. They tell me I should just eat all the figs.
I appreciate the sentiment. I’m trying to. I want to. But I’m already stretched too wafer-thin to even go in search of a distinct sense of purpose.
“You’ve got time!” they say, and that’s also true, but also, I feel like I was 17 two years ago – and I haven’t done anything remarkable since (or before, to be fair).
One of my girlfriends thinks we should plant a fig tree symbolically once we establish our commune and have it figured all out. I really like that idea.