It's a Wonderful Lie: 26 Truths About Life in Your Twenties by Emily Franklin

I read this book, hoping that it would help me understand exactly why I'm not as happy in this, the most...highly anticipated of decades of my life...as I expected to be. Believe me, I'm happy. I am honestly probably happier than most people deserve to be - happier than I deserve to be - but I am trying to accept this happiness and these blessings with as much bumbling grace as I can. I'm just not...skipping through fields of flowers with my beloved by the hand, getting paid truckloads of money to do something that is a perfect expression of my hearts desire.


The book is a compliation of essays written by women who have "survived" their 20s and lived to tell about them...and to tell the lessons they've learned about how your 20s aren't exactly all they're cracked up to be. So I read this book, hoping for some sort of validation. Some sort of...relief, maybe, from the guilt I feel from having all this happiness and yet still not quite feeling completely fulfilled. This book was good at making me feel more normal than I previously felt - the essays compiled to make up this book each spoke to me for different reasons, but as a whole I found the book to be less than what I was hoping it would be. Granted, I may have been hoping for something to speak to me in the same way SATC did, but this wasn't it. There were essays that spoke to me more strongly than others, but only one or two that truly "got it" or truly moved me.

All in all, the predominant themes were all the same - the details varied, but all in all the story was the same. Quit worrying. Give up the drama. Let go of the idea of what your 20s are supposed to be and relish instead what exactly your 20s are. Your 20s. Not the life your mother lived, or your sister lived, or your friend is living. Just yours. Love them for what they are, because they'll be gone soon enough, and then you can start worrying about what your 30s are supposed to be.

I think I will choose to take the advice of those ladies, and I will live my 20s and make the mistakes now that I can live to regret later.

Note to the other 20something ladies reading this blog - pass this one up. Watch reruns of SATC instead.