Hot Topic: Wunderkinds

When Mario Gotze scored that goal during the World Cup finals, the commentator announced Germany's imminent win, but he also noted Gotze's age with amazement. The 22 year old is the second youngest player to score a goal in the World Cup finals since Wolfgang Weber in 1966 (Gotze is older by 6 days). Then it got me on a rampage to find the age of all the players on the German national football team and found that a majority of the players are under the age of 30.

Let's get to it:

Since I was a wee lad in glasses and braces, I have always been told that I had 'potential'. Which meant nothing to me because although my grades were above average, I was nowhere near the intelligence of my other classmates. When I graduated high school and began my internships, some of my supervisors and my father's business partners commented on the bright future ahead of me. They listed all the ways I could make it 'big', with some even encouraging me to move to the U.S. to pursue a career in show business. To which I shrugged and dodged the idea faster than George Bush and a shoe. 

Many older individuals who have engaged in conversations with me have made remarks on my maturity. Which, I think, is largely attributed to the fact that 19 year-olds have been stereotyped as pothead college drop-outs, so I might come across as an oddity. I don't feel more mature than the next person, but I suppose I might have to take their word on this. My maturity isn't a sign of a bright future, it's just a sign that I have mentally developed faster than my fellow teenagers. The way I write, speak, or act has nothing to do with the number of magazines I will grace in the future, and I wish that someone told me that before. Because for so long, I have always been showered with compliments regarding my presumed intelligence and how much of the world I will conquer by my 30th birthday. Success isn't just about the 'promise' you show when you're young, it's about what you do with that promise and the luck that comes your way. The world is my oyster, but I might not get its pearl.

The world has this obsession with wunderkinds. From Mark Zuckerberg's incredible feat with Facebook at the age of 20 to Angela Zhang's cancer breakthrough at 17, society rewards these young individuals. Prodigies, we call them. They have a mixture of inhuman brilliance and incredible opportunities that allow them to reach society's standard of success. The thing is, most of us aren't nearly as bright as they are, and even if we are, we devote our passion into something less glamorous. You know, professions that don't revolve around finding a cure for cancer or creating a multi-billion dollar enterprise. So what are us young ones left with? The pressure to achieve a similar level of success as soon as possible.

I don't have a problem with seeing people my age who are more successful than I am, because they were born with different circumstances and opportunities. However, due to the amount of praise that successful youngsters get solely due to their youth, it has made me feel quite overdue. I understand that success shouldn't be limited to a certain age, but I am at that time where my inherent 'potential' and career opportunities are finally crossing. Don't you notice that people often say, "you're young, you have the world ahead of you, don't worry!" but will stop saying that completely once you're in your mid-to-late twenties? Because it seems that after you hit the golden age of 25, 28, or 30, you no longer hold that iridescent future of success. You continue on with the job you have, and the world continues to pat the backs of the youth, which used to be you only a few years ago. Your dreams don't matter anymore. You are an expired box of Coco Puffs and everyone wants the new Honey Crunch.

"Don't compare your chapter 1 with someone else's chapter 20," they say. But Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein at 19, and it feels like my chapter 1 is endless. What happens when you pass the prime age for young success? What happens when your potential is no longer called 'potential' but simply 'unused talent'? What do you do when the world begins to look at you as if you once held a luminescent candle but is now in possession of a gasless lighter? It's as if we're no longer allowed to enjoy our youth because we are expected to be successful as soon as that degree is handed to us on the big stage.

Why are we so obsessed with achieving things as soon as possible? Why do we have to make our first million by the age of 25 and our second million by 30? Just because someone else runs faster doesn't mean we're not running as fast as we can. Sometimes we forget our talents are completely different than someone else's, and that circumstances in life have allowed others to achieve faster success. But that doesn't mean that we're not trying our hardest in life and that success is inextricably linked to youth. We can earn our first million by 35 or build our first business by 40 because there shouldn't be this age limit on happiness and success. Enforcing guilt on the youth for not already being millionaires at 21 just makes us feel inadequate and defective when in reality, there's nothing wrong with treading life at our own pace. This generation is given education and opportunities like coal in an engine train, and the world shuns those who seem to run slower than the other locomotives. We are not trains that are built the same way, and it's detrimental to our self esteem to think that we do.

There is no designated time for anything in your life. You don’t have to have your first kiss at any certain time, you don’t have to get married in your 20′s and you don’t have to do anything just because other people think it’s best. In fact, you will be much better off if you just do what your heart says. The day you stop caring what other people think is the day their opinions don’t mean anything, because you’re not there to give them weight. - Unknown