Taxes, Tinder, And The Timely Terrors Of My Twenties

I’m curious – what does your Tinder bio say (if you have one, of course)?

Perhaps it’s a witty one liner from your favorite episode of Parks and Recreation that shows you’re into situational workplace television, or a lyric from your favorite Migos song, which I suppose just says you’re well acquainted with Spotify’s Rap Caviar playlist. Whatever it is, it gives the world of eligible internet daters a taste of who you are at the given moment, at least as much as you would like a potential suitor to know about you before you’ve met. But more importantly, what you’ve written says a lot about what you prioritize through your interests, identity and sense of humor – of all the many things you might have chosen to write, you landed on an uncomfortably sexual double entendre. How’s that been working out for you?

Sometimes it can feel a little ridiculous to sum yourself up within the confines of a 500- word character limit, barely scratching the surface of your essence. Much of what you choose to include comes from a mental image of yourself at a very superficial level, summed up for the consumption of the swiper. That idea at the time of writing your bio seems spontaneously constructed, candid even. But I would argue we are subconsciously reevaluating our superficial identities at all times of the day. Who are we now? What do we want to do when the weekend rolls around? What do we prefer to snack on in between classes? What do the people we interact with on a daily basis think of us? These, of course, aren’t the specific considerations of a Tinder Bio Laureate, but they come from a similar place in our constructed sense of self.

As we all were, I was conducting this analysis through a more juvenile lens as a middle schooler with big dreams – not for who I was in that present time and place, nor for a Tinder bio – but instead for who I thought I would be as I entered true adulthood. My twenties. A time of limitless exploration and the complete destruction of my inhibitions. I pondered enthusiastically all that would be when I wasn’t attached to the whim of an authority, say, my parents, guardians, and teachers. Who would I be? What would I like to do on weekends? What would I prefer to snack on in between classes? What would the people I interact with on a daily basis think of me?

I imagined I would have my life all figured out personally, financially, and socially. I thought things just magically fell into place for the well-meaning, independent, stable young adults I crossed paths with in my childhood. Both naive and tragically self-centered (give me a break, I was a child), I thought very little about the challenges that faced them as they settled into adulthood. And even if I did realize that I might face similar challenges when that time came for me, I figured things were so far off I didn’t have to worry about much of anything at the moment. I asked the inventory of superficial, surface level questions for my future self that would ultimately give me an image to aspire to. That ignorant bliss carried me through my teenage years, until suddenly I was 16. Then 17. Then 18. Now 19. And in just two months, I will enter the phase of my life that was once for me a much-anticipated destination – my twenties.

Restless and anxious in bed at night, I’ve recently begun to do some reevaluating of the strides I’ve made in my life thus far. I’ve ultimately come away from those late-night sessions in silent solitude with a few questions. Have I become now who I resolved to be when I was a child? Have I manifested the many financial, personal, and social successes I imagined for myself as a young twentysomething? Am I the apple of my childhood’s eye?[su_pullquote align=”right”]Have I become now who I resolved to be when I was a child? Have I manifested the many financial, personal, and social successes I imagined for myself as a young twentysomething? Am I the apple of my childhood’s eye?[/su_pullquote]

My resolutions for my future self were superficial and wildly inflated back then. I would be in a relationship worth all the writing room drama of a series on the CW. I would be financially independent and well on my way to building wealth as a young pop music and film megastar. I was constructing my bio in the confines of a rigid frame of mind, the foundation of the idealistic worldview of my youth. My self-constructed prophecy curried excitement then, but it’s made for a great deal of undue disappointment in the modern day. In the metrics of a younger me, I fail miserably. I don’t even make the cut-off.

My previous mention of Tinder takes greater relevance here. Young dating as a person with compounded minority identities in monolithic spaces has presented social and emotional challenges I never thought to anticipate. Especially in the digital age, it has become easy to exist behind my phone, talking to people in whom I have no real interest, or going on dates that end in the idiosyncratic awkwardness of knowing we probably won’t see each other again. It’s not very much fun dealing with the fears of living and dying alone.

Melodramatic, much? Who can blame me? We live in a society that values a particular kind of relationship as the basis of the family unit, a pillar of one’s personal success and an ode to one’s ability to create meaningful emotional bonds. To struggle in an area of such immense importance in the societal imagination would give anyone immense amounts of stress. I’m sure many of you can relate or have felt this way before.

Now faced with more realistic financial burdens, I am navigating the challenges of financing college as a low-income, guardian-less individual in a system that was not built or intended for people like me at its inception. Recently, another actuality has kicked in concerning my extensive financial aid package – taxes. No one can adequately prepare the young idealist for the firm grip of the governmental hand reaching into your pockets and taking a cash tip for its services. Not only am I a underprivileged student, but I am now being taxed for that reality. Not the fate of a wealth building young entertainment and media icon, if you ask me. As I gain a greater sense of independence and earn my autonomy in a world that promised it to me by this time, I feel scammed out of assets I do not have. Life is quickly approaching in ways I never anticipated or ever felt prepared to expect. It seems like there is so much pressure for me to have things figured out in a more permanent, effective and utilitarian way. Former anticipation becomes real world expectation, and the equation is not at all balanced.

I deal with universal issues in the saga of modern society’s aspiring young adult. But that still doesn’t keep me from catastrophizing and personalizing those issues to the point of creating my own isolated sense of failure. I look back and want to tell my younger self that I have met some of my greatest long-term resolutions – but sometimes, it feels like I just haven’t. The expectations of success that get pushed out through the idealistic viewpoint of our media and institutions of greater cultural influence do little to appease young people’s greater anxieties as they enter the real, independent world. There are billions of ways to lead a life, accounting for each individual on the planet alive or long gone. But we are all pushed to create the ideal bio, the one that checks off all of the boxes in notions of success. As we enter our twenties and venture out into society at large, this becomes very real – sometimes too real.

To combat those anxieties, I try to dig deeper, beyond the superficial levels of my identity, to find someone that lives autonomously and with the grain of his truest self. While the expectations here seem to be abounding, college is also helping me to become better equipped to think of myself in this deeper way, beyond the level of the 500- character limit. Tempering comparisons. Easing the emotional impact of my mistakes. Allowing my life to unfold as it naturally will, and not forcing it to tread the road of my idealistic younger self. As society’s issues begin to impact me more closely socially, politically, and economically, especially given these times of increased tension, the ability to have more trust in the process of my own life will take on greater meaning and increased importance.

Now, as you approach your life and begin paying closer attention to the bio that encapsulates it, don’t be so obsessed with developing the most consumable and idealistic idea of yourself. Aspire, instead, to go with the flow of things. Resolutions, especially the ones we’ve created as younger and more naive versions ourselves, are meant to be broken. Screw societal standards. It’s more fun to mess up sometimes, anyway – makes things interesting 😉

Nicholas Massenburg-Abraham ’20 studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. He can be reached at nick.m@wustl.edu.