26 Years Old

Albert Einstein wrote his revolutionary paper on special relativity at age 26.

Henry David Thoreau delivered a Harvard Commencement address at age 19.

Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice at age 20.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apple Computer at age 21.

Orson Welles performed the “War of the Worlds” radio show at age 23.

Jack Nicklaus won the Masters at age 23.

Louis Braille invented his system of writing for the blind at age 15.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his first opera at age 11.

Bobby Fischer was an international chess grand master by age 15.

Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Brian Jones, and Kurt Cobain each changed the world of music before their deaths at age 27.

The Beatles formed in 1960. They were ages 17-20. In a decade together, they wrote over 200 songs and recorded over 300 songs. When they broke up, none of them was older than 30.

At age 21, Tony Iommi wrote the music for the first Black Sabbath album, despite an injury just 4 years earlier to two fingers that could have ended his musical career. In doing so, he invented heavy metal and thus inspired/fathered over 100,000 heavy metal bands ever since.

Today, people in their teens and twenties can and have become millionaires. The Internet makes it easier than ever to take a flash of inspiration or a particular talent and convert it into a successful and lucrative reality.

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Today, the government tell us that 26 year olds must be provided health coverage under their parents’ insurance plans.

Today, college students, adults by most legal definitions, demand that they be shielded from hearing or seeing words that they might consider distressing or discomfiting.

Today, young people demand safe spaces where they can hide from anything they personally find unpleasant.

Today, young people demand that their education be “free,” i.e. that the government force others to pay for it.

Today, one 27-year-old in four lives with parents.

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Author Bret Easton Ellis has dubbed today’s young people Generation Wuss, a far more pithy and apt sobriquet than I or most of the planet could hope to come up with. This is the generation of Pajama Boy, of College Liberal, of eroding masculinity, of nerd culture. Beards and fedoras (excuse me, trilbies are markers of… what exactly, I’m not quite sure.

Does all this sound like a cranky middle-aged baby-boomer/Gen-Xer lamenting the conclusion that society has moved on? Indeed.

My complaint isn’t, however, that society has moved on. It always does, and at some point every one of us wakes up to the reality that we’re no longer part of what we used to be. I figured that out a few years ago, when I realized that I was neither keeping up with nor cared to keep up with the evolving face of social media. Sure, I’m on Facebook, which seems to be a “safe space” for us middle-aged but still somewhat-wired folks to congregate, and I have Twitter and Instagram accounts. I have a small Youtube channel that I use primarily to add some movie bits that I find funny or punctuating to blog articles. I am aware of Snapchat and Tumblr, and I’ve heard of Tinder, Periscope, Pinterest and Vine. There are countless others that I haven’t a clue about. Other than on Facebook, though, I really don’t have a social media presence, and that’s OK. There’s a reason that marketers chase the 18-to-49 demographic, after all. I really don’t mind not being up-to-date with society’s movements, and new fads like the Pokemon Go rage hold no interest for me.

My complaint regards the direction that society has moved and is moving. Despite technology making it ever easier for young people to achieve and succeed, despite the fact that a teenager can learn enough coding and tech skills to get a job straight out of high school instead of having to go to college for four years, despite all the freedom that modern society has offered, today’s youth is increasingly opting for delayed adulthood and increased nannying by authority figures.

Each of us gets to decide what he or she wants to be. That decision is about mindset, motivation and effort. Not everyone has the gifts to be Mozart, but everyone has the ability to strive to be Mozart. You’re not defined by your peer group, no matter what the compartmentalizers over at the Social Justice Bureau tell you. You don’t have to think or act like they do. You don’t have to conform to their norms, especially when their norms suck. You don’t have to be Pajama Boy or Liberal Girl. You don’t need and shouldn’t seek “safe spaces,” free this and that, protections from microaggression, or Big Government handing you stuff and punishing those you don’t like. The world may be an indifferent and difficult place, but it’s also a place where many have achieved great things at a young age.