I bet you know just what I mean when I ask if you’re a “tweenager.”
It’s those times in life when we leave one life stage and begin to move on to
another. Remember when you were 12? The marketers called you a tween—no longer a
child but not quite a teenager either. For most of us, those were our awkward
years, with a desperate need to discover ourselves.
As we grow older, we learn that tweenism exists at any
age.
A quiz from Reductress, the satiric news site for women, asks 20-somethings, “Are you in a quarter-life crisis?” These women are tweens, caught between being a respectable 30 and a whimsical 20.
We can all take heart from the Reductress wisdom, in-your-face
editorial style notwithstanding.
They state, “We’re
not going to sugarcoat this. You’re going through some sh…t. What am I doing
with my life, type of sh…t. …This looks like a 100% quarter-life crisis to us.
Don’t worry it will get better. We promise.”
Folks in their 60s are also tweenagers, and it will get
better, “we promise.”
Recently, a 68-year-old friend told me, “I’m still
working and have two kids in college. I don’t feel any different than I did in
my 50s, but I am soon to be 70. Sometimes I feel out of place.”
I understand. I, too, had a daughter in college and was
working in my 60s. I know what it means to be the “wrong age” for your life stage
or the way you feel about yourself.
As 10,000 boomers turn 65 every day and still feel like
they are in their 50s, tweenism is a common denominator. More of us at all ages
are increasingly uncomfortable with dictated life stages. So why do we cling to
them?
My 94-year-old philosopher friend has a theory. She says humans
are all born into four constructs, which we desperately try to control.
As humans, we struggle most with the fourth—change.
We create a filing cabinet in which we organize stages of
our life and then impose expectations to fill each slot. Childhood means school…graduation
means work…young adulthood means marriage or relationship…then comes children,
home ownership…job and career progression…retirement…aging…and gone.
That makes tweenism a human-made construct, not an
immutable law of nature.
History proves this. In the Middle Ages, there was virtually
no childhood. You were born…were dependent on your family for food and safety…and
then by age 12, most people worked. In 1900, when one could not expect to live
much past 47 on average, life stages were compressed. You left school younger…got
married younger…had babies younger…and, of course, died younger. There hardly
was old age.
Because of longevity, we recognize a new life stage called Gerotrancendance.
Until sociologist Erik Erickson gave it a name, this was
simply being “very old.” Now there are expectations for the very old, as well. They
must be philosophers, mentors, poets and artists. Gerotrancendance says we will
eventually transcend the material and focus on our legacy. Heaven forbid if we
just want to shop or go dancing.
Compare what’s expected of us
to how we are living. Individuals are choosing to work for
different periods, retire or be semi-retired at different ages and play
different roles in the lives of their children and grandchildren. Society’s conformities
are being defied, with a residue of confusion as we try to “benchmark” ourselves
against its “shoulds.”
Consider this. If age doesn’t matter, you will never be a
tween! You will be who you are where you
are. Since we can’t control change, we may as well be grateful for where we are
at this moment while looking forward to where we are going.
My radio show Generation Bold begins with an excerpt from, a three-minute musical by a Broadway lyricist. Take time to enjoy it at I’m Inappropriate for My Age. The message is that every day, there are fewer and fewer things that are inappropriate because of age…even a rapping Granny.
Once you have change under control, you can tackle time,
space and gravity.