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Some Advice for a Young Woman

Seawriter
@Seawriter
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Or man, for that matter. This has recently gone viral on the Internet:

Reponses to it fall into two broad categories:

  1. Grow up, snowflake
  2. That poor girl. You meanies don't understand what she is going through.

I guess I have to save any disdain I feel for her parents. They pretty obviously failed to prepare her for life. I mean that. I have three adult children who went through the same transition as this woman. (She isn't a girl. She is an adult.) Only they were prepared because mom and I prepared them, starting when they were 12. They started thinking about the type of lives they wanted to live when they were adult during their teen years and took steps to achieve their goals.

More than that, they were aware that they would not have the resources to live the lives they wanted to live straight out of college. Compromises were necessary and they knew they had to pick and choose what was important.

That is the advice I would give this woman. You cannot have everything -- not at once and not straight out of college. Decide what is most important to you and determine what you have to do -- and what you have to sacrifice -- to get it. Want to live in the city? Look for ways to make it affordable. Find a roommate or two roommates to split the cost of an apartment -- live two or three to a room. Don't want a long commute and don't want to share a room? Get a job in the suburbs.

As for "the deep sense of alienation from work and prosperity that young people feel"? (That was a comment from someone in category 2 - "Poor thing.") Well, ok. Feel alienated. It won't make anything better, but you can feel alienated if you want. If you want to drop out, go ahead. But you cannot get something for nothing unless someone else is getting nothing for something. If you are good with living off of someone else's labor without recompensing them, what does that say about you?

I am not trying to be mean. I am trying to be realistic. Life really isn't fair. But if you work hard, you do eventually win through. But here is the hard truth:

Nothing is going to change that, either. Take agency for your life.

This post was promoted to the Main Feed at the recommendation of Ricochet's members.

Discussion (92)

  • kedavis@kedavis

    Also reminds me of a story I probably first read in Reader's Digest perhaps 50 years ago or more. About the daughter who had just gotten married. Short and sweet, One day she calls her parents, crying about some argument with her new husband. She wanted to come home. Her father told her, "You ARE home."

  • Painter Jean@PainterJean

    It was impossible not to laugh at this silly creature, though I too have to wonder what kind of parents/parenting would have produced this level of immaturity. Well, come to think of it, what kind of schooling did she have? Kids in grade school and high school are gone most of the day, and there's homework to do afterwards. I would think school would have prepared her at least somewhat for the real world, even if her parents failed in that regard.

    She did not grow up on a farm.

    The use of profanity in combination with the overuse of "like" was grating.

  • cdor@cdor

    I really feel sorry for her. Just a second, let me take some time to flip my hand through my hair, OK now I’m ready. For the first five years of my career, I worked 5 1/2 days a week and didn’t take a vacation. But I was young, full of energy and desire. It really wasn’t until my first vacation that I realize I hadn’t had one in five years. I do feel sorry for her because she has been so pampered, but I do not know of anything I could do to help her at this point. She has to do this living thing on her own.

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