Oh, I understand your point, and of course there will always be exceptions. I've seen some exceptionally mature twenty-somethings. In fact, there's a fourteen-year-old at my soaring club who is, in most areas, more mature than a lot of adults I know.


And there are certainly people who are 'forty-going-on-twelve.' I've seen more than a few.


However, those people are the exceptions. That there are exceptions doesn't make any less of a fact that most people to have a change in perspective and an increase in 'maturity'during their thirties. I wish I could describe it better to you, but it's a matter of realizing that the world isn't quite as idealistic as we all thought it was (or could be) in our twenties, and that while you really can do "anything you want", anything you do comes at a price circumscribed by the choices and responses of the other people around you. From a 'twenties' perspective, it seems perfectly natural, logical, and right that you should and can be whomever you want to be, dress however you like, etc., and do so in relative isolation from what other people want and choose.


I know that you feel that you're fully aware of the consequences of your choicesright now. I'm not saying that you are blind, nor am I saying that a 'forties perspective is better than yours. I could say, "more realistic", but even that's more of a judgment call than I think should be made.


People in their twenties often see older perspectives as 'condescending', when really they're not. I wish I still had some of your idealism. Certainly much of your strength of conviction about your ideals.But something changes about the time the mortgage bill has been coming for a while whether you've got a job or not, and the baby needs to be fed at two am even though you have a big meeting tomorrow, and you start to grudgingly realize that you can't do everything you want to do in your life, and even the things you really want come with a big price tag in terms of who you are and what you do. About the time you're ending your thirties, life and your responsibilities start becoming more about the compromises you have to make in order to get to the places and people you really want. You and your friends can't change the world very much, because you all have your hands full just keeping life going for yourselves and those you love who depend upon you. I know I'm not describing this very well. I don't know what terms to put it into that would make this more visible - that's my deficiency, not yours.


The big problem in discussing this is, as I mentioned before, that we lack common frames of reference. I've been where you are. I was in my twenties, too. I said the same sort of things you're saying, I held much the same ideals, and I traveled the world and broadened my horizons, too. The problem is that you've yet to be in your thirties or forties. You don't yet have the perspective that I and others my age have had. That's NOT a shot against you. We've lived twice as long, and most of us have been through twice as much joy and cr*p in life, excepting the isolated ones as you point out, of course. It's not a shot against you to say that your perspective is more limited. It's like saying you haven't been to Sweden yet. No more moral judgement than that.


You'll have to trust me when I say that I'm NOT insulting you when I suggest that most twenty-somethings have a more limited, idealistic view of the world and how it works. I'm not sure that I could've heard that without taking it as an insult when I was your age, so perhaps you will take it so anyway. I certainly would've argued vehemently that I knew what was going on in my world, and that I would make different choices for my life - better ones that didn't require as much compromise of my ideals. I sincerely hope thatyou can.


I just remember being in my twenties, and having much this same discussion withsomeone in their forties back then (in person, as this waspre-Web), and raising almost exactly the same objections as you've done here. And he said the same things I'm telling you now, and had the same small knowingsmile that I have on my face right now, talking to you. Ithink he heard the echoes of whoever told him these things, saw the reflection of his own smile in that earlier conversation, and the echoes of every similar conversation down through theyears and decades before.Just like I'm doing. Which is whyyou see us smile at you in situations like this- we're not laughing at you. We see in youourselves, some time ago, and know that you'll be smiling the same way, twenty years from now.