The 20s loneliness nobody warns you about

‘20s loneliness is real’ a friend in Mumbai texted me recently. We were talking about how life had suddenly become so hectic, and lonely after starting to work. You wake up alone, go to office alone, spend most of your time in office by yourself, travel back to home alone, and then go to sleep alone. Of course, you have interactions with your friends, your colleagues and what have you. But there is not much companionship. It begs the question - is this loneliness mostly about not having a partner in your life? Is that all one is missing? Me and this very same friend collectively lamented about how the dating market is not the most alluring. You meet someone here, catch someone’s fancy there - but nothing happens. Sometimes you lose interest, sometimes the others do. It’s all a mating game, and surprisingly we all are losing.

But back to the omnipresent loneliness of the 20s. I know it is not just about being single. Then what is it about? What does one need to do to not feel lonely? One popular answer is friends. People say that if you have really good friends (which I have the fortune of), you won’t feel alone. But we all do, don’t we? What is the issue?

Why cannot we feel whole just by ourselves?

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It is a rebirth

A good friend, Sandesh, recently told me that starting to work is much like being born again. I was telling him how much has changed in my life since I started to work, and how the job sometimes can get a little intense. He told me that starting to work is like a rebirth.

“Have you seen how much new borns and infants cry? But eventually they learn the ways and get around with their own scars”

Honestly, this framing changed my whole point of view. Initially, I was uncomfortable with all the changes being thrown at me, all the client deliverables, and the tight deadlines. But it has already gotten better in 3 months. I am more comfortable. I am learning. And if I apply Sandesh’s understanding to my experience, it means that the discomfort is a sign of growth. You only grow if you’re uncomfortable. It also tells me that all the discomfort and intensity is transient. Not in the sense that it will go away later in life, but that I will become better at handling it. We begin to understand patterns, get better at our work, and develop our own working styles.

It is also really interesting to think about the growth of an individual in an organisation. All my seniors who I look up to also started somewhere. They also had no idea about a lot of things at one point in time. They also faltered many times before they became the epitome of perfection. What makes a senior objectively better than a junior is the time advantage. Which is to say that in most cases, the only difference between a fresher and someone who has been in the organisation for 5 years is the cumulative experience of 5 years of work. 5 years later, this fresher, all things being the same, will be much like the senior that he looks up to now.¹ Of course, there is variance in terms of people’s proficiency, intelligence and what not. On aggregate, however, in professional fields, the key differentiator is experience.

But why all this talk about seniors, experience and feeling incompetent? Because one of the biggest reasons (or so I think) that people feel lost when they start their first job is because of the sudden change in their environment, routine & goals. Imagine this, the average Indian fresher spends anywhere between 4-6 years in college where the only thing he had to do. was to study a little before exams to score decent marks. He had no real responsibility, no clients to send e-mails to and, (mostly) no huge real-world implications to his actions. And when he starts to work, suddenly ‘as per our last conversation’, ‘trust you are doing well’, and ‘our advise would be to do….’ enter his vocabulary. He starts to advise businesses on transactions worth millions, and sometimes billions of dollars (of course with the help of a senior). He has ‘urgent deliverables’ and ‘tight schedules’.

One of the biggest changes that happens when you join a workplace is that you are expected to be responsible and accountable. For the most part of one’s life, until about 22-24 years of one’s life, one is mostly only responsible for one’s grades (not even for one’s education as parents & counsellors step in and guide many). The only thing that one has to do, is to focus on one’s studies and try to do well. But when you become a professional, you are responsible for not only your own work, but also for the larger project that you work on. You are accountable for things. You are expected to be on top of things, know your work deeply, and meet certain expectations with your work products. All this is very new for someone who, for the longest time, was not responsible for most things in his life. Humans are creatures of habit. It takes time to kick a habit.

Just a month back before joining, this very same poor lad used to sleep at 6 am after binge-watching movies with his friends with no care in this world (the lad was me). And now he has to worry about the quality of his work, what his colleagues and seniors think of him, how to treat interns, and using the correct terminology in his emails. The delta is insane. So no wonder people who have just started a job feel lost, and confused. And if you are by yourself, physically - living alone and away from home, or notionally, without a partner - the loneliness seems much more intense than it really is.

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Rat-traps don’t work anymore?

If you start your first job and you’re living by yourself², boy, is it a rollercoaster ride. I want to make it clear that I strongly advocate living by yourself immediately after you start college. And I am not the first person to make this point. See here.

Living by yourself contributes much more to your growth as an adult than any other activity. But putting that aside, living away from home while you start your first job is an insane experience. You encounter problems that you had no idea even existed in the world (because your parents took care of them). Suddenly you have to pay bills you either didn’t hear of, or never had to see in your life. You have to fix problems you didn’t even know existed. For the first time you realize, just how expensive it is to exist.

Living in your home and setting up a home are two entirely different things. This June, when I shifted to a new flat to start my job - we had to do a whole bunch of things. From setting up the gas connection, and buying a stove, to fixing electrical fittings, learning how to pay bills, figuring out which term meant what in a bill etc. Ours was an especially bad case because of some middleman complications,³ but it is not very far from the average experience of renting a space in Delhi. I never knew how big a task shopping for groceries is until now. It took me a couple of months to finalise on a set menu (which by the way I haven’t started following) and understand what is the best place to buy groceries from. Currently the socket that we use to operate our microwave is busted, and I think it has been that way for a week. Most days you either don’t get time to fix these small issues, or you’re busy solving other issues. Talking of pestering problems, we had a rat problem not too long back. Our first course of action was to borrow a rat-trap from our caretaker. I was under the impression that rat-traps work. Apparently the mice have evolved and they no longer fall prey to the unsophisticated trap. We had to call pest control and spread poison-laden wheat & biscuits throughout the house to drive the menace out.

During sometime in the first week of my job, my boss had called me in his cabin for a chat. One of the first things he asked me was who I was living with. I thought that was a bit odd. Why would he care? I told him I live with my friends. He was happy to hear that and said, “it is important to live with your friends who care for you, because this job sometimes can get hectic and if nothing else your house needs to be a place that brings you comfort”. His words have rung true on many instances when I’ve come home late or have had a very heavy day. Having a space you can call your own and living with people you adore is a true blessing. It doesn’t even have to be much. A banter here, a fifa game there. And the knowledge that no matter what, at least I will not have flat problems does wonders for your quality of life (doesn’t include paranormal problems - which we’ve had).

But this is not the first time I am living by myself, or in a flat. Then what is so different this time? One, the lack of time makes solving regular issues much more difficult. I remember during college, I used to spend countless hours talking to my flatmates about all kinds of things in the world. We used to go out a lot, nowhere special - just on walks and nearby spots. We had the privilege of time. Now, all of us barely have any time, and when we do, our timelines don’t match. Something or the other keeps breaking down in my home and it continues to be broken until the weekend (much like us). You try to do as much as you can over the weekend. Fit your whole life, aspirations, love, friends, sports - everything into those two days. This reminds me of when SRK said to Saif Ali Khan in Kal Ho Na ho:

“Waqt hi toh nahi hai mere paas”.

Second, you have to figure everything out by yourself, including the money. Earlier you didn’t have to care for where the money for your expenses came from, but now - everything from rent, to gorceries, to going out, to buying essentials, paying your maid is on you. This is both very new, and very challenging for anyone who has just started to earn and is living by themselevs.

Then there’s your health. In college, it was so easy to eat the food we’re given, and play sports in your spare time. The health took care of itself for the most part. But after starting to work - there is barely any time for health. It has become a huge challenge to take care of my health. The ease of ordering food at any time, coupled with the fact that there aren’t any grounds to play sports nearby is a lethal combination. As is quite natural, I have put on some weight since I joined my firm. But thanfully, after 3 months - I’m starting to take control of my health back. It is difficult. And if you are a working professional, just take a look around - you’ll see how common it is to be unhealthy as a working professional. You’ll have to make very significant changes very early on in your life in order to live a full and healthy life.

However, not all about being a working adult is a sad affair. The other day after work, I decided to clean the flat and my room. I put on some music, and cleaned my room, my wardrobe, the living room & kitchen. Took me some time, but I was very satisfied by the end of it. I like the idea of me being responsible for my own things. I don’t have to depend on others to do what I want to do. It is a good feeling. A feeling I had been chasing. It feels nice to be self-sufficient. It feels nice to be able to purchase the things you want. It feels nice to be able to buy your friends gifts. It feels nice to be free.

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Is it love, or social conditioning?

One of my favourite poems is ‘All you who sleep tonight’ by Vikram Seth.

Not many days ago, on a night quite unremarkable, like the one before it and the one after it, I felt exactly like the subject of this poem and wrote a thread about the loss of home.

On some days, you just need someone to spill your guts to. Friends help. Good friends will lend their ears to you. Best friends will tell you to suck it up and tell this sorrowful tale to someone else. But deep down, everyone wants someone ‘special’ to share their lives with, down to the last detail. Most people don’t accept this, but no matter how great your friends are, at the end of the day what everyone deeply desires, is a partner. A companion. Someone to share intimacy with. To share laughter and joy with. As the poem Being alive goes,

Someone to hold me too close. Someone to hurt me too deep. Someone to sit in my chair, And ruin my sleep, And make me aware, Of being alive. Being alive. Somebody need me too much. Somebody know me too well. Somebody pull me up short, And put me through hell, And give me support, For being alive. Make me alive. Make me alive. Make me confused. Mock me with praise. Let me be used. Vary my days. But alone, Is alone, Not alive.…

In your 20s, almost nothing will come to define your life as much as love/lack of it will. And perhaps it is just the start and it never stops. But i definitely think it must be the strongest in the 20s. If you think this is an exaggeration, just think about what is the most common theme of your conversations with your close friends? It will be love/partners/expectations etc. We are all hungry, deeply hungry for love. No matter what we say or do, we all want to be cared for. It is very strange. Society has convinced us that we are not complete and whole in ourselves, by ourseleves. It creates discomfort in being single by convicing us that it is a temporary state. And that we must always ‘aspire’ to find someone. The reason why people routinely settle in relationships is that they think it’s better to be with someone sub-standard rather than be by themselves. The conditoning is so strong that people almost become afraid to be alone. They need someone constantly to be associated with them. The strongest addiction is of people. It is one I am kicking myself. As I’ve said before,

“We often try to find, in other people, the comfort that only we can bring to ourselves”.

But it is so very difficult to learn how to be by yourself. When you’re accustomed to distracting yourself by surrounding yourself with people, choosing to be alone is disorienting. You have an almost gripping urge to text people and meet them. Just so that you don’t have to spend time alone. As Emily Dickinson once wrote, ‘The heart wants what it wants’. Because at the end of the day, having fought countless rats and rent seeking middleman - you lay down on your bed, away from home and family. The loneliness creeps in. You sometimes wonder if life would be better if you had a partner. If suddenly, life would have a richer flavour. If a partner could bring the excitement that nothing else brings you. The heart wants what it wants. It is very sinister actually. The empty feeling. It makes you believe things that are not true. It makes you miss things that you don’t actually miss. It makes you miss people that you don’t actually miss. This late night vortex of emotions is the perfect tool of deception. Whenever I am in the middle of such a surge of emtions, I remind myself that my need for a partner is manufactured by society & people around me. It is reinforced through movies, books, and the media around us. It makes people think less of themselves and wonder if there is something wrong with them for being single.

I’ve been extremely privileged that I have always been single by choice⁴, but that is starting to change a little as I grow old. The dating landscape is vastly different from what it used to be 5 years ago. Of course, this is too vast a topic to delve into right now - but mota mota⁵ most people are in one or other form of a complicated situation with either their exes or other folks. It is very interesting. Maybe people of this age were always like this and I just didn’t know. But I do remember this not being the case 5 years ago. And the tales from folks in their late 20s is not very comforting. Countless folks who want to date/marry cannot find decent people they can be with. It is a game. Half of the time you fool the other person, other half you’re getting fooled. Something about this age/era has fundamentally distorted how all of us think about ourselves, love, and companionship. Or maybe, just maybe, this is the new normal. Without going too much into this - the point I am trying to make is, with all the other things going on in your life in your 20s, I think one tends to overvalue the good a relationship can do. Worse is the feeling that one needs to be with someone. The notion that being single is such a terrible thing is manufactured all around us and fed to us. Everyday. It is a notion I fight everyday.

I will leave you, dear reader, with a short poem. I hope both you and me can learn to love oursleves and know that we are whole unto ourselves.

1. This is what I tell myself if I ever find myself thinking about the knowledge gap between me and my seniors and if I will ever be able to bridge it.

2. Sorry, if your parents are in the same city - it doesn’t count. The point of indepedence is to be truly independent. Not weekdays independence.

3. Delhi is an epitome of a rent-seeking society. People try to extract the very last penny out of you. Surprisingly, it is a very low trust society where the default mode of communication is attack. This neatly fits into the stereotypical depiction of Delhi in popular culture. Loud, and rowdy.

4. Since I entered the dating market. I was not with anyone during school because I was in a boys boarding military school.

5. This phrase has an interesting story. During one of my firm’s candid talks that are held on last friday of the month, one of my Senior Associates said, being from South India she didn’t know how to talk to clients in Hindi. She figured out that if you prefix what you wanna say with mota mota - the clients will magically be attentive and understand the concept.