“Do you remember when you were 18 and starting the next phase of your life?” a 50-year-old woman asked me. “What were your favorite songs that year?”
I found myself smiling immediately. “Funkytown” wasn’t exactly ground-breaking, but it was #1 the night I graduated from high school. On the rare occasion I hear it now, that silly song still puts me in that “everything is possible” state of mind as I said goodbye to the “oppression” of living in a small town and headed to a slightly less small town a few hours away because I couldn’t wait until fall semester to start college.
“See?” she said. “You’re grinning from ear to ear.”
And I was.
“Do you remember how you felt that year?”
I did. But to her point, it was really more about 18 to 23, maybe even 25—those few years when life was opening up to me. That was my coming of age, my escape from childhood, my first steps into adulthood.
Granted, 23 to 25 weren’t quite as fun because the cold reality of a terrible job market hit me, and all that enthusiasm about the future was quickly doused. Then I started an unexpected new career at 25 and the excitement returned. From there, music became the soundtrack for both the good and hard times of my life.
But the time when my whole outlook was about beginnings and conquering the world was that 18-to-23 window.
My friend’s point was that we can refresh our outlook now by recalling how it felt to come of age then. Both moments are rites of passage, and both deserve celebration.
There’s an echo—if we let it—of that wide-open excitement about stepping into the world. And that echo can matter now, when we’re often encouraged to shrink back from it.
After her suggestion, I went straight to my digital music library and created a new playlist. Then I funneled in every song released during my ages 18 to 25. I left out only a few—anything downbeat or tangled up with relationship breakups.
The point was to create a playlist of expansive music—even if it was “Funkytown”—so why include songs that don’t serve that purpose?
Next, I checked Billboard’s Top 100 for those years and added songs I’d loved and forgotten. Again, I skipped anything that felt heavy or carried negative associations.
At that point, I had around 87 songs that made me feel like I could conquer the world, and I was aiming for 100.
The beauty of creating a playlist is that it keeps growing. For the next week, if I heard a song from that era at a restaurant targeting patrons my age—which means they want me to feel good—I added it when I got home. If a car commercial used a song from that time—because that’s how they want me to feel—I added that one, too.
Once I reached 100 songs, I let the playlist shuffle in the background while doing chores or working quietly. It’s like having the radio on back then when I was planning my entire life ahead of me. I can concentrate easily, even singing along while I work.
And every time it plays, I feel the same sense of youth and newness I did back then—reminded that beginnings don’t belong only to the young.
Questions:
- What age or what years did you first step out into the world? Was it the year you graduated from high school? Headed to college? Left home to travel the world?
- What were your dreams and expectations then, before they were tempered by—perhaps—harsh realities?
- What songs are in your playlist from that era?
- What songs can you add?
For every woman who has ever felt invisible, wondered what comes next, or dared to believe the best is yet to come.
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23 lessons from a life reimagined, on choosing happiness without apology.
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