Coming Of Age In The 2020s

In our poll of 14,600 young adults, just 14% say they have a role model they can trust, only 19% trust doctors, 68% say they watch their moms and dads drink, and yet 81% say the most important thing they have—their most important possession in life—is not their phone, but their health. Some are trying to set out on their own path, creating businesses that mean something to them even if not to norms, taking a chance on the road rather than behind a desk, in search of maybe not so much role models but their own role in life. 21 year olds Jack and Dylan are in that camp, kindergarteners not that long ago packing their Buzz Lightyear suitcases for what they thought was a real trip to Mexico, their teachers having bought them tickets for the voyage--but of course it didn't really matter that the class trip was pretend. They were 5 years old, innocent, dreamers, and now the boys are setting out with a bag and a dream cultivated by what they see and hear and their own emerging, if not at times wobbly sense of self. They are doing so at a time in this world when coming of age is so often measured by a fear of missing out - it has many questioning things, beaten by the moment, the expectations and frail social pact. Most, about 93%, say they "compare themselves to others" and just 24% feel they will follow the path their families did before them. “I’ve watched my mom die young from cancer and my dad struggle with alcohol, and both their parents struggle with pain as they got older,” Kassie, 22, says. But there is hope in kids like this pair who are motivated by dreams, doing not what social media says or what the older generation says, but what may be...Jack jammed his baseball mitt, Dustin Pedroia t-shirt and Spider-Man PJs into the suitcase that morning in 2008, zipped it closed and walked to school. He picked up Dylan along the way and together those boys made it past the cubbies and into Judie Goldenthal's classroom at 8:20, with time to spare before takeoff.  They were the only students who packed a bag that morning....”I don’t remember a lot,” Jack says, “but I remember that day.” There’s always something reassuring to me about kids coming of age and the inherent trust and innocence and honesty they live by.  We don't really have that in our health care system as much these days - not on a wide scale anyway - our poll highlights that. Maybe we could learn a bit from the kids? The two boys dragged their luggage home that day and pulled up to the kitchen table 7 hours later. They were sweaty and beaten, but not because they never did get on a real plane. Quite the opposite. How was Mexico boys?   “Hot, “ Jack said. Now 21, those two boys are soon packing bags for a real trip west to start their life. It doesn’t matter that this trip is real and the pressure to make it high. They are giving it a go and giving me some hope at time when many their age and mine are caught in a psychological restlessness, searching for something simple, easier…"What's in your suitcase Jack," I said. "Not much - my sneakers, some clothes and my baseball mitt....and oh yeah," he said smiling, "my bathing suit."