If I have worried about one particular group through these long months of the pandemic, it’s not the elderly as much as it is young adults. There has been no shortage of conversation about how the pandemic might impact the elderly, the front line workers, those with compromised health, and even children still in grade and high schools, however, in my experience, the impact of the pandemic on young people, people between college age and mid-to-late 20’s, has been dramatically underappreciated. Instead of beginning to separate from their families, embarking on a stage of self-discovery, of learning skills needed for independence, they often ended up doing the exact opposite. They were drawn back to their families, gave up their apartments, independent living, and dorms to move home. I think, especially in the beginning when the country was closing down, when colleges were actually sending kids home, and we had no idea if there would be enough food or toilet paper, when hospitals where over crowded, the US death toll was skyrocketing, and we had either no information or mis-information, the banning together in family-pods made sense. It made physical, emotional, and logical sense. I think parents wanted their unmarried kids home as a way to protect them. And home they came! By the droves!
What I worry about is that safer-at-home was not without cost to this group and that the cost is largely unrecognized. And, to be very clear, I am not even proposing that moving home was the wrong thing to do, just that this group moved home and that the impact on them is somewhat invisible. The covert message is that this group is lucky! They are lucky because they are young, they are, generally speaking, healthy and they have their whole lives ahead of them. They are lucky because they do not have the financial worries that their parents have and, in many cases, their parents and even grandparents have stepped in to offer them financial support. The common phrase used is “They have their whole lives ahead of them.”
Now, just to state the obvious, I know that they have their whole lives ahead of them. I know that in the grand scheme of things, this pandemic will be the tiniest piece of their lives compared to other stages. Do the math! There are 18 years of childhood, if they are lucky, 60 years of adulthood, 40+ years working, decades of parenting and grandparenting for those who make that choice, as well as many other stages and accomplishments available to them throughout a lifetime. Let’s say that the average lifespan of someone in this group is a conservative 85 years. They could live longer, but for the sake of this argument, let’s say living to 85 years of age is a lifetime. Then let’s say, start to finish, the restrictions and necessary altering of lifestyles as a result of the pandemic lasts for two years. That means that the pandemic will be just slightly over 2% of their entire lifetime. Surely a small percent compared to the other stages of life. But, I am arguing that this 2% is way more impactful than we think. Even the idea of having their whole lives ahead of them is distinctly the view of someone who does NOT have their whole life ahead of them! Having your whole life ahead of you is something that is said by those who have perspective. Perspective, however, is a function of having lived at least some amount of life, of having had a variety of experiences, from which lessons have been learned, after enough time has passed such that we can reflect back on those lessons. Young adults do not have any of those things. How could they? They have loss and confusion and, in some cases, they are even expected to count their blessings and be grateful.
The problem with the blessing counting business is that the experience of loss is often not made better by the counting of blessings. Counting blessings, while ignoring the acknowledgement of loss and grief, is a recipe for depression. Not even one of the young people with whom I work isn’t grateful for their family and all of the support they have received over the past year. Many of them are in awe of the job their parents have done throughout this time. But that doesn’t change the fact that they themselves have lost so much throughout these many months. They watched as their dreams, their plans, their greatest expectations - graduations, celebrations with friends, the cross country move for an exciting job, weddings and wedding showers, baby showers, Christenings, so much of what was important to them - all just vanished in front of their very eyes. And not having a way to acknowledge and recognize their experience of loss without sounding like they are not grateful, just complicates the loss.
From where I sit, I might make the case that these young people are actually the unrecognized heroes of the pandemic. Oh, I don’t mean the ones who were recklessly partying with no regard for safety or the possible impact of their behavior. That group lost very little. I am talking about the group of young adults who kept working on their goals in spite of restrictions and prohibitions. I’m talking about those who graduated from college and watched their name be called on TV, instead of having the chance to walk across the stage and receive their diploma. Those who didn’t have all those pictures taken with their friends in caps and gowns, and who traded their graduation celebrations and parties for cars driving by to beep at them or for zoom calls. I’m talking about those who moved back home in order to finish the school year, and then, because there was nothing else to do, did summer classes instead of finding a job or sharing a house down the shore with friends. I’m talking about those who moved home because they could hear the panic in their parents’ voices, and because their parents believed that being close to home offered them protection from the CoronaVirus.
Week after week, I met with so many of these young adults by Zoom and they talked about what this time was like for them. They talked about what it was like to jump into new jobs and careers without the benefit of having an office to go to, or being assigned a mentor to help them learn the ins and outs of the company. Some jumped in and took over family businesses because they were at less risk than older family members. They got elevated to a degree of responsibility that in any other set of circumstances would have required weeks of interviewing for the best candidate. Some took on the family obligations of their grandparents because their parents couldn’t do all the necessary tasks to manage multi-generational needs. They took over cooking or running errands or cleaning or school work with younger siblings. They joined their parents and grandparents on daily walks, instead of going out clubbing with their friends. They were huge contributors to making life happen for their families and communities, even though they had no experience with what they were being asked to do, and even though that is not what they would normally be doing in their lives. It was like the Universe pushed a great big pause button on their life and then, instead of continuing with the previously scheduled show, the Universe changed networks. Kind of like we WERE watching a weekly scheduled sit-com, but then suddenly we were watching Naked and Afraid.
Of course, everyone had to make sacrifices and everyone was inconvenienced during this time. There is enough loss to go around, but what I am pointing to here is the invisibility of this group and the disregard for what they lost and what they contributed. They did all those things without much recognition that their generation was not immune to the impact of the pandemic. They gave up a lot of dreams for their own lives and, like everyone else, they, too, are not getting that time back. They are not going to get back the chance to walk across the stage with their class, or to plan to come home, or to volunteer to help with their family of their own accord. When this is all said and done, I think they will find themselves in the unique position of being that much older, but not that much further along in their lives. They will still have to separate from their families and develop independent living skills. The pandemic launched them onto a path without much care about whether or not they wanted to be on that path. They will now have to decide if their current situation was always temporary and what decisions are now available to them. I wonder if they will feel like they have the freedom to make radical decisions or if they will feel that they lost that time. And it isn’t like I have a solution to this situation. I am not proposing we throw them a party, or a parade or that they get their own federal holiday or anything like that. In fact, at the end of the day, this is really just my own musing based on my experience with young adults! But, at least from my little corner of the globe, I wanted to acknowledge these amazing and selfless young adults and to offer my sincerest thanks - on behalf of those of us who have lived long enough to have perspective!